The original title for this blogpost was “Everyone who Hand-sews is a Masochist” and for good reason. As a long-term Breaker of Sewing Machines, I make everything by hand. I spent last night unpicking the inside leg seams of a pair of skinny jeans to turn them into a pencil skirt, or wiggle skirt as they are also known. I cannot buy these things off the peg so being able to make one that fits both waist and hips (the curse of a 10-inch difference between the two) is necessary. The reason for the masochistic tendencies is to do with stitch rippers. If a crab and the Terminator had an evil metallic love child, aside from the premise being a splendid movie second only to the classic Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, the result would be a stitch ripper. I have lost count of the number of times I jabbed the shiny little bastard into my hand. Hence, all hand-sewing types are devotees of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Science Fact. The silvery git has now been banished back to the sewing box to plot and scheme for the next time it gets to taste the blood of the innocent. I suspect it is currently terrorising the pincushion for being fat and calling the thimble a wanker.
Today’s poem will be a terza rima. I have written two of these so far, as I really like the rhyme scheme. I’ll present the shorter one for your delectation, only because I’m more nervous about the longer one so I’m keeping it under wraps for now. Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern A-B-A, B-C-B, C-D-C, D-E-D. The two possible endings for the example above are D-E-D, E or D-E-D, E-E. There is no set rhythm for terza rima, but iambic pentameter is generally preferred in English. There is no limit to the number of lines, but poems or sections of poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet. (IT’S THE FI-NAL TER-CET! *twiddly guitar music*… OK, just me who thought of Europe then… my shameful addiction to hair-rock is showing)
Today’s tea is… well, coffee, actually, after a couple of very late nights. Technically, as I went to bed at about 5 or 6 am, they were early, but we won’t quibble. I am ashamed of myself, and not just because of my spray-on-jeans-and-eyeliner musical predilections. How could I reject thee, o delicious camellia brew that you are…? I shall have some down-to-earth Builders Tea tomorrow in penitence. Which brings me to the Sugar Question. I don’t take sugar in tea, therefore my tea is known as a ‘Julie Andrews’. (White none – N.B. this joke only works if you rhyme none with gun rather than John.)
Saint Julie of the Voice of Awesome.
I have heard black tea (and coffee) sans sugar referred to as a ‘Whoopi Goldberg’ – black none – in honour of the movie Sister Act.
Sister Mary Clarence flanked by Sister Mary Patrick and Sister Mary Robert
And a lot of my friends who take tea with two heaped teaspoons of sugar refer to this drink as a ‘Nato Standard’, for reasons unknown to me. However, this week the Queen of Smut (a.k.a. my housemate-to-be) and I have decided that a Nato Standard drink is to be renamed as a ‘Dolly Parton’ – white with two big ones.
"Bitch, please." - the divine Dolly rocks in 9 to 5
Oh the hilarity. Or possibly oh the humanity. Hugh Manatee was not available for comment, however.
In the sections of this blog where I don’t post up an actual poem, otherwise known as ‘the bits where I ramble about tea, poetic form and things which amuse me’ I’m going to post a link to a poem each time. These poems will not be written by me, but they’ll be poems that I’d like to bring to my readers for one reason or another. I chose this one for the sheer fun she has in playing with language (I rarely put swear words into my poems, so it’s a bit of a shock for me to see them in this one). It was also published in one of my favourite books, The Goddess Guide by Gisele Scanlon (HarperCollins 2007 ISBN-13 978 0 00 7261437) And so with no further ado I present to you:
I hate how you use me
Call the sky paranoid, skulking
behind the clouds. The grass mad
with rain, the wisteria neurotic.
Call the robin a loser, waiting
for someone else to turn up
a worm, the fox a cretin,
for standing on the train tracks.
Call the hedgehog a fuckwit
in the glare of a car, the sunflower
a slut, the peacock a poofter.
Call the evening light a cunt
for fading, Artemis a bimbo,
the moon a big fat moron,
the fallen apple, a failure.
– Maggie O’Dwyer
You’ll never look at a hedgehog the same way again…
What a fuckwit.
Until next time,
Miss Ju
poetryandtea 