OEBooks Book Blog Gets a New Look

I knew it was time for a change. Been knowing it quite a while. But here's my problem.

I've always worked off script, unafraid to be different. But I fear telling someone what I want because I'm afraid... & woo how that word makes me cringe... fearing that I won't get what I want... and woo, this one makes me cringe even doubly the shiver... because I also fear I'll be asked to pay for what I didn't want.  It's something like visiting a hair salon.

Oh my goodness! I'll sit in a chair, point to a style in a book I like, get spun around, and want to scream out loud at the shock of the fright! And No! It's not my face! The style is just nowhere near to my taste.  My daughter has been with me on a few of these excursions, someone who knows me very well, and she'll even look at me after I get spun around and quietly remark, "no, that style isn't you."

But wait... let me backtrack right here. Because yes, there are exactly three stylists who've turned my do into exactly what works for me, and every time too. So yes, there are extremely talented artists who know their hairstyling stuff. My problem is fearing the what if... and along with that what if, is what if the artist wants to be paid... ugh... for something I could have done myself! And here's the real clincher, as if there needs to be another... but psst... psst... those stylists who've done my 'do' just right. Well, guess what? I never pointed to a picture in a book. Somehow they looked at me, my hair, my head, and just put it all together, giving me something I could work with.

I know someone out here knows exactly what I'm referring to. But if not, and even if so, let me throw off another one of my gems, inside GEM, that tap dances around this theme. And oh, while I'm thinking on it, that masthead up there, I love the look for now.  It's a twist between something professionally scholarly... and laid back relaxed... you know... a little something that reflects that side of me.

Romancing a Stone

This chap,
an obtuse, rotund, perturbed
obviously portly brainy old knap
stuffed in a lounge chair chugging on a pipe
furrowed brows looking disturbed
his own doing, his own plight
apparently a literary sponge in his own right
dribbling rhetorical sentiments
in a hardened ashy voice
talking about life and its nascent vernaculars of choice.

Miffed and rightly perturbed
I grabbed the phone and dialed back home,
plagued by who on earth would hack into a nugget,
desecrate nature, it really hurt.
I mean, critique the work, don't lucubrate its worth.

Okay. Okay. And Uh huh, Uh huh.
Let me calm down and start back over
with the scholarly imperial old fella
and his comrades in the back row
who without inquisition or provocation
he first, and then the back row
grabbed a drill and each took turns
to mow and sow
into harden clay, dried and set in stone,
over and over, they took turns, performing
a lithotomy into 45-year old stone not meant to churn.

Filled up, juiced up, stuffed old rustic doorknobs
masticating over dawdling things,
the portentous fed up greedy snobs,
groveling over a desert tray too small for their eyes,
oscillating impervious hyperbole I now realize.

Should the Sahara cover up and hide from tears in the sky,
and at least one penguin be made to get up and fly?
Must a right or left be the absolute mandate
and Mother Nature's storm of itinerant children
be taught obedience?

What happened?
Were they looking for salt less sultry,
sharing a fact unknown
me pushing beer nuts and cheese up their nose
where they preferred they not go?
Or had insolence shared a brand of Merlot
they already knew,
tell me, who's doing who?

Wait, wait. I went into the phone
asking back home to please hold on,
for drilling into hardened clay a little too long,
trying my damnest to romance a stone.