CanLip: The Great Canadian YouTube Contest

Hello, My Little Blueberries! Queen B here. I’ve somehow entered myself into CanLip: The Great Canadian YouTube Contest. Essentially, a bunch of us wacky spoken word artists have made videos of our poems and uploaded them to YouTube. The winner is the person with the most “likes”. What is the prize? An all-expenses paid trip to Vancouver, British Columbia to compete in the Canada Individual Poetry Slam and to be a national champion. I’d sure as heck love it if you could watch this video of my poem “Fat” and click on the “thumbs up” sign…and if you were to share that URL with your friends and various communities, encouraging them to do the same…well, I just might marry you. I’ll be honest – I’m really lousy at doing dishes, but I can cook better than yer mama. 

NaPoWriMo Day 24

24/30 Prompt: Write About A Windowless Room

They say that G-d never closes a door without opening a window…
But what happens when the room never had windows and doors to begin with?
Depression is a mausoleum,
A stone cold building where there is no escape.
There are no windows in mausoleums,
Because no one wants to watch the dead decay.
There are no doors,
Because we don’t want the dead to slip from sepulchres to dance between tombstones
On nights where the full moon shines bone white bright
Or else skeletons will play ribcage xylophones with skull percussion.

 

Depression is being sealed in a crypt while you are still alive,
A kind of horrific mistake where no one believes that your heart still beats
Even though you cannot cry out.
You can barely catch your breath,
With every inhalation you can feel the oxygen levels in your prison decreasing,
And you know that it won’t be long until you suffocate.
Your fists are raw and bloody from where you beat them against the concrete walls,
Every knuckle is like hamburger,
And although you cannot see anything in the darkness,
You hear that the rats can smell your fresh meat,
And that they are gathering together for the picnic that will take place
When you finally rest your face on the stone floor.
You pray for a seam of light,
For a single spot of shoddy workmanship
Where you can wear down the torn nubs of your fingernails
Picking away towards freedom,
Or apply your mouth to suck the sweet, fresh air
Moist with dew,
That you swear you will never, ever take for granted again
If only you can be spared this fate.
The worst part
Is that even if someone could hear your ragged breathing,
Even if someone could hear you scrabbling frantically against the unyielding rock,
They could never reach you,
Because you have been bricked into your isolation.
You are forever alone,
With no arms to hold you,
With no lips to kiss you,
With no one to say your name one last time.

 

G-d may never close a door without opening a window,
But He does create rooms that are sealed without exits.
Its been a long time since Joshua marched down the walls of Jericho –
If you haven’t heard a ram horn by now,
You can be assured that your fate is sealed.

This work, “Untitled” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NaPoWriMo Day 23

23/30 Prompt: What Wakes Me Up

Hail Coffee,
Full of beans,
Blessed art Thou amongst liquids.
Blessed is the fruit of thy roast,
Caffeine.
Holy Coffee,
Mother of Beverages,
Awaken us dreamers now
And in the hour of our alarm clocks.
Amen.

When I say that I am on my grind
I don’t mean that I am getting my hustle on –
What I am really trying to say is that I have a $100 machine
Making approximately the same sound as a 747 during takeoff
Pulverizing my organic, fair-trade, ethically cultivated coffee beans
To the perfect level of “coarsely ground” that my French press appreciates most.

Is that a little bourgeoisie of me?
Hell yes!
I refuse to apologize.
My diet primarily consists of rice, pasta, and lentils.
I have no partner, no children, no time share, no car.
I work seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day,
I haven’t slept eight hours consecutively for three days in a row
In six years.
If I am going to have to spend thirty hours
Coaching some labouring lady through a brow presentation
Without getting paid and without getting a break,
I deserve to have excellent coffee in my Thermos.

The poster of Che Guevara over my bed
Admonishes me:
“Revolution. Rebellion. Resistance.”
I totally agree, my dear sir.
I fully intend to end oppression,
Dismantle patriarchy,
And overthrow the government…

…but not until I have my damn coffee first.

 

This work, “Untitled” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NaPoWriMo Day 22

22/30 Prompt: Write About Packing Up Your Place

You think it would be easy
To leave a place that was never yours to begin with,
But you are no Bedouin –
You like to settle.
You would prefer to force your roots up through concrete sidewalks,
Punch your branches through aluminum siding to reach sunlight,
Grow on an angle to dodge buzzing power lines,
Rather than simply move…
Rather than disappoint someone.

 

So,
Even though you hate that the kitchen has no counter,
You think the painting of the giraffe is ugly,
And you resent picking up his pants from the front hall everyday,
You still cry tears of regret as you shove garments into garbage bags.
Do you do the dirty dishes in the sink before you go?
Do you make him one last glass of chocolate milk to leave in the fridge for old time’s sake?
What can you do to make this more “okay”?

 

You want to touch things,
Leave fingerprints all over the apartment like a crime scene.
You want to write apologies on the walls with your blood,
To carve out the bullets of his words from your body
And place them on the table he bought from Ikea
That he told you that you loved so very much.
You know that he would only tell you that these bits of metal ugliness
Still coated with strings of your fascia
Clashed with his décor.
The truth is that every bit of who you are
Has never co-ordinated with the couch,
Your soul has never matched with the china,
Your heart never snapped into place when it came to his life’s puzzle.

 

You leave the picture of you together on the mantle,
The one where he had your face pressed into his chest
So that he took up the entire frame except for your back.
Once, that photograph made you feel like he was holding you,
Keeping you safe, warming you with his very heart.
Now, you realize he was trying to smother you,
Killing you with what came from his core,
Absorbing you into his body until you were no longer separate.

 

You vomit when you remove the mezuzah
Knowing that technically, he’s more Jewish than you’ll ever be,
But you are the only one who kisses it,
And he will just throw out that holy scroll with G-d’s name written on it
Just like he threw away his grandfather’s prayerbook,
Just like he threw away the gifts from your bridal shower.
You are the one leaving,
And yet somehow, you are still the one being left behind.

 

You take one last look at “your home”
Because you know there will be no going back
For forgotten items,
For missed opportunities,
For stray kisses that might have been pushed under the couch during vacuuming.
Although you have your boxes of books and your university degree wrapped in the quilt
Someone bought you as a wedding present,
You know that you are leaving things behind.
There will always be fibres of your being floating with dust motes in the air.
There will always be pieces of your heart scratched into the laminate flooring.
There will always be the whispers you spoke into that hole in the closet where the drywall crumbled.

 

Will the next people who live in your place
Catch the lingering fragrance of your pain
In their clothes
When the windows have been shut too long?

 

 

This work, “Untitled” by Beth Murch,  is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NaPoWriMo Day 21

21/30 Prompt: Write a Letter as an Insect

Dearest Human,

Can anyone love you as truly as I?
I am not seduced by your external features.
I do not seek cling to the shafts of your hair.
I do not sup upon the oils your pores secrete.
I do not long to suck your blood or fill your lungs with mucus.
I want only to adore you from the inside out,
To have a special place deep within the core of your body.
I am your most faithful friend.
After all,
Who else worships the parts of you that you pretend don’t even exist
Because they are “dirty”, “impolite”, and “smelly”?

Your duodenum was my birthplace,
And the warm, snug loops of your intestines
Cradled me as securely as any mother’s arms.
I grew quickly, a proud 150 micrometres,
Moulting my skin twice
To make room for the children I so longed to have.
No longer an innocent larvae,
I migrated with my companions to your ileum,
Where we engaged in Bacchanalian orgies,
Mating whilst ingesting your colonic contents.
Sadly, all my lovers died,
And I watched their lifeless husks get squeezed out of your guts
Alongside your breakfast.
Did you realize the families you were tearing apart
As you casually sat upon the toilet?
Did you know that you flushed away the bodies of our dead?
Did it matter to you that we
Who were soothed by the lullabies of your flatus,
And raised in the fragrant gardens of your gut’s bacterial fermentation,
Struggled to stay attached to your mucosa
While you tested our loyalty with peristalsis?

No matter, Dearest Human.
I forgive you,
Because it is my nature.
After all, I am going to be a mother soon.
I am now heavy with eggs – nearly 16,000 of them.
Perhaps being gravid has made me even more tender towards you.
I want to show you my little eggies,
I want you to see my sweet babies,
And so I am travelling through your colon,
Towards your rectum.
I am going as fast as I can,
Sometimes, as fast as 14 centimetres an hour,
Just so I can lay my children
In the gentle rosebud of your anus.
How delicate are those shy little wrinkles!
How moist and dark is that place that smells of your most personal secrets!
I cannot wait to wriggle my way out of your bum
And paint your perineum with a slimy trail of my tiny eggs.

Do you see how much I love you, how much I trust you?
I am sharing with you the act of creation!
Together, we will raise this new generation:
For once I birth my progeny,
I will entrust their care to you.
I know that after all my tickling,
You will scratch your crack
To collect some of my eggies under your fingernails
Just so you can share them with your friends.
You’ll make sure my legacy lives on
By spreading my larvae-to-be
On sheets, on clothes, in food, in pet fur…
This, this is the meaning of love, Human.
Together, we co-create.
Can anyone love you as truly as I?

– Enterobius Vermicularis

Is this your image? If so, please let me know so that I can credit you!

This work, “Love Letter From A Pinworm” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NaPoWriMo Day 20

Prompt 20/30 Getting Ready To Go Out

There is a sexy, delicate, ladylike way to put on a bra.
I never learned how to do it.
I yank that bitch on and she gets as twisted as my humour after half a bottle of wine.
I wish my garters clung to my stockings half as well as
The cat hair sticks to my clothes.
Panty lines? Seriously?
Shit, you’re lucky if I remember to wear panties at all,
I don’t worry about anyone seeing that I am actually covering my bits.
I do worry about the fact that this 24 hour outlast lipstick
Is smeared on my teeth…and chin…and cheek.
Liquid eyeliner is the creation of a sadistic mind –
Why is it that I never fail to make one eye smokey
And one eye look like I play Quarterback?
Patchouli.
I put on a lot of it.
If your eyes are watering from my hippie-stink,
You won’t notice that my blouse is buttoned-up incorrectly
And that my skirt is being held together with pins.
Dreadlocks are a great – tie them up in some kind of knot and you are good to go.
I always have the right shoes for any outfit
Because I only have one pair of shoes
And that makes them the right shoes for any outfit!
A fashion-forward day means that I’m not wearing any of the following:
Meconium
Breast milk
“Spit up”
Blood (mine or others’)
Food splatters
Toothpaste blobs
Paint
Noticeable bleach stains.

Whatever.
I never claimed to be a
Role model.

This work, “Getting Ready To Go Out” by Beth Murch,  is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NaPoWriMo Day 19

19/30 Prompt: Six Things You Can’t Do Without/Dating Profile

 

After the lady with the socks made from cat fur
The grocer who kept sending me MP3s of his Christian metal band
The endless comments of
“Those tits”
“UR uglee”
“U fukk 2nite?”
I vowed that I would never again create an online dating profile.

It’s not that I don’t love receiving Instagram photos
Of strangers’ genitalia
Or that I am offended by “text speak”
Or that I am disturbed by the wearing of dead pets as accessories
Or people with mullets rocking out to Jesus rock anthems…
…except that, well, I’d much rather be a spinster than deal with any of that, thankyouverymuchokaybye.

I’m a whole lotta womyn
It’s going to take a lot more than six items
To determine my compatibility
With anything other than ice cream
And the movie, “Blue Valentine”.

Before you tell yourself
That you are up to the challenge,
You should know that I refuse to compromise
On the following:

You should be funny – preferably, with a slightly dark, slightly twisted sense of humour.
You should be gentle – be kind to others, tip generously, encourage an atmosphere of relaxation and peace, you should want to genuinely look after others.
You should be a bibliophile – this about more than reading (although reading is good). You should probably be slightly aroused by the actual books themselves.
You should like to eat – otherwise, there is going to be a lot of delicious food that will sit on the table going bad while I look at you with sad eyes
You have faith – in G-d, in faeries, in flowers, in Nature, in the stain-removing properties of Oxyclean…something. I don’t care what
You believe that good girls get special kisses.

All interested applicants
Should submit a resume and cover letter
Detailing their experience
And activity proposals.
Bonus points for naughtiness and creativity.

This work, “Untitled” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NaPoWriMo Day 18

18/30 Prompt: Write About Being Somewhere Sacred

You never drew a breath.
Your lips,
Perfectly pouted for a lifetime of kisses
Remained sealed.
I anointed you with the only precious oils I had available –
Sweet almond, lavender, and lemon.
I did not have silk, velvet, or brocade,
But I used the Winnie-the-Pooh receiving blanket
Someone gave your mother
At her shower a month ago
To wrap you against the kind of cold
That was inevitable.
When I placed you in her hands,
She caressed you with the respectful, humbled passion
Of a worshiper adoring the feet of a saint’s statue.
You were as quiet as an icon.
We stood with hushed devotion,
As if waiting for you to weep tears of milk
Like the ones that seeped through your mother’s hospital gown.
“Someone should pray,” she whispered.
Since there was only the three of us in the room,
And you had chosen to keep your secrets,
I was the one who put my hand on your head
And prayed,
“Heavenly Father, we entrust this child back into Your loving care…”

 

This work, “Untitled” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NaPoWriMo Day 17

17/30 Prompt: Write About Silence

In an anechoic environment,
You become the sound.
Suddenly,
You become aware of the smack and pucker noises
Your sticky ventricles make as they open and close.
Every breath you take
Rustles cilia like long grass,
And your lungs fill and deflate
With the whine of latex balloons.
The blood pulsing through your veins
Splashes constantly like a swimmer diving into a pool,
While fingernails split through cuticles
With the discord of an axe felling a tree in a peaceful forest.
Each scratch of the arm or face
Recalls the crunching of a child running through hard snow,
And every blink causes eyelashes to stick and rip apart like Velcro.

The dead
In their caskets
Bless the chewing of the earthworms
Because they know that the audible gnawing of splintered wood
Will distract them from the sound
Of their own flesh
Decaying .

This work, “Untitled” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NaPoWriMo Day 16

16/30 Prompt: Making Breakfast

Breakfast
Like lovemaking
Should be enjoyed in a leisurely fashion
Except for those times
Where it is preferable
To quickly shove something in your mouth
Before running out the door.

This was not the image I wanted to put here – but I decided that what I had in mind was way too scandalous.
Let’s just say Google “sexy breakfast” and the first thing you see is what belongs here. 🙂

 

This work, “Making Breakfast” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.