Charity Sunday: Adams County Animal Shelter

 

http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com

For this Charity Sunday, I am going to send items to the Adams County Animal Shelter for their Smitten for Kittens drive. 

https://animalshelter.adcogov.org/smitten-kittens-donation-shower

The shelter is not currently set up to take monetary donations, so I will purchase items through Amazon. Thus, if I receive 5 comments I will send at least $5 worth of items. I hope that makes sense.

Here is the shelter's Amazon wish list.

https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/3V00TS9TWBFL1/ref=hz_ls_biz_ex

This donation is being made in honor of Lafayette, one of the best friends I've ever had in this crappy and stupid world.

The above image is the property of Cara Hartley/Ornery Owl/Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld. You are welcome to use the image respectfully as long as you credit one of the above. 

I shouldn't have to say this, but because the world is filled with shitty assholes, I am going to tell you all that I have no patience for the kind of person who, upon seeing this photo, says something nasty about my body or sanctimoniously declares that they don't like tattoos. I really don't give a fuck what you think about my body or whether you like tattoos. If you can't say something nice, fuck off elsewhere. Like into the sun, for example. The need to be hateful or behave in a holier-than-thou fashion says worse things about you than it does about me.

I adopted Lafayette and Tara from the Adams County Animal Shelter in March 2010. They had both been in their kennels at the shelter for most of their lives. Tara was six months old. Lafayette was 8 months old and absolutely wild. He kept tapping at me. He was completely agoraphobic when I first brought him home and hid under the printer table until nighttime. When I went to sleep, he came out and shredded my arm. It wasn't out of malice. He wanted to play. I had the vet trim his claws, and he learned how to play with soft paws quickly.

Those of you who have been with me a while may recall Tara from her post-surgery pictures when she had a benign tumor removed from her forehead. She looked like a juvenile Skeksis. 

https://www.naughtynetherworldpress.com/2021/05/charity-sunday-help-with-taras-medical.html

Tara is doing well overall. Following the chemotherapy treatments, the fur that was shaved off to do ultrasounds of her abdomen grew back a lighter color. 

Tara and Lafayette were either half-siblings or cousins. They were from the same feral colony. They shared the condition of feline stomatitis, which required the removal of most of their teeth. Both of them were quite inbred and had multiple health problems. Lafayette had multiple system failure and had to be put to sleep on his sixth birthday, 17 July 2015. My heart broke into a million pieces on that day and has never mended.

I originally posted the following poem on this blog on 12 November 2020. It honors Lafayette and Trinity, who didn't get along very well. They were jealous of each other. However, they both got along with the brothers Leon and Raymond (both gone now as well) who served as a buffer between them. 

Trinity died on 4 November 2016 from brain and lung cancer. As that was the same day that Donald tRump was elected, it is quite simply one of the shittiest days in history.

The poem also appears in my third poetry volume, December Mood. If you are smart enough to subscribe to my epic newsletter today, you will eventually receive a link to a free ARC of this epic collection. (Honestly, I'm still working on getting the new and better Naughty Netherworld News set up.)

https://bit.ly/NaughtyNetherworldNews2

If there is some crazy reason that you don't want to receive a thrilling gift in your inbox every month, you can purchase the poetry volume from Amazon or borrow it via Kindle Unlimited.

https://amzn.to/3JVAKWv

Every day I think of you

I remember what good friends you were to me

If you were the color of your spirit set free

I’m wondering what you would be

Lafayette, would this be you?

Did you become something like this when you rose away?

I thought that there would be more time to say

How much I love you every day

 Trinity, my colorful girl

With your beautiful, expressive eyes

Would I recognize your new disguise?

If only I could be that wise

I walk through the darkness of my dreams

With eyes closed fast, not wanting to see

The hopelessness surrounding me

Knowing what I wish can never be

~cie~

Acknowledgments

Picture 1: A Haiga created by me. Please credit Cara Hartley/The Real Cie

Picture 2: Beautiful You Are by Magic Love Crow

 https://magiclovecrow.blogspot.com/

Picture 3: Delightful Donkey by Gina Morley

https://daydreambeliever-gina.blogspot.com/

Picture 4: Carnival Dreams by Shelle Kennedy

http://sunshineshelles.blogspot.com/

This post was created using these prompts:

 November PAD Chapbook Challenge prompt for 11 November 2020 (write a color poem.)

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/2020-november-pad-chapbook-challenge-day-11

Poets and Storytellers United Weekly Scribblings #45

https://poetsandstorytellersunited.blogspot.com/2020/11/weekly-scribblings-45-artistic.html

This poem was posted to these places:

http://poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com

https://lbry.tv/@poetryofthenetherworld:9

 

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is the intellectual property of Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on LBRY. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Want more monodies?

Get ‘em here!

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April PAD Challenge/NaPoWriMo 2022 Easter Concert

https://odysee.com/@YvesHonPianist:0/Debussy-Children%27s-Corner%2C-L113:3?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

Let's listen as Taiwanese pianist Yves Hon serenades us with Debussy's Children's Corner suite. 

Happy Easter if you celebrate such, or blessed Ostara, a nod to whatever else may be celebrated today, or simply have a pleasant Sunday. I took yesterday off, obviously, and did nothing of any importance, but I needed a break. I hope perhaps I can step back into both fiction and poetry with a slightly clearer mindset, even though there are still issues feasting on me. Never mind that, let's get into it.

First, a crack at a Curtal Sonnet. My iambic pentameter tends to be more like iambic whatever, here are 10 syllables for your bunghole, but let's take a crack at it. Mr. Hon will serenade us with Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite I.

https://odysee.com/@YvesHonPianist:0/EdvardGrieg-Peer-Gynt-Suite-No-1%2C-Op.46:5?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

Touched, Touche

Prompts Used

https://www.napowrimo.net/day-sixteen-9/

A curtal sonnet has eleven lines, instead of the usual fourteen, and the last line is shorter than the ten that precede it.

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/curtal-sonnet-poetic-form

Gerard Manley Hopkins invented the curtal sonnet in the 19th century. The poem consists of 10 lines written in iambic pentameter and a final line consisting of a single spondee (or foot consisting of two long or stressed syllables). Here's the rhyme scheme:

Line 1: a

Line 2: b

Line 3: c

Line 4: a

Line 5: b

Line 6: c

Line 7: d

Line 8: b

Line 9: c

Line 10: d

Line 11: c

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/2022-april-pad-challenge-day-16

Write a touch poem

https://odysee.com/@YvesHonPianist:0/M-Ravel-Sonatine:a?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

Now Mr. Hon will play Ravel's Sonatine while I write a mad poem. 

Seriously, that's today's April Pad Challenge prompt. Write a mad poem.

Good Dogs, Mad Owner

Prompts Used

https://www.napowrimo.net/day-seventeen-8/

Write a poem about dogs

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/2022-april-pad-challenge-day-17

Write a mad poem

I wrote about rehoming my miniature dachshunds. 

They were good dogs, but I was not a good owner.

I didn't beat or starve them or anything like that, but I was a terrible choice for a dog owner. Let's let Mr. Hon play Chopin's Scherzo for us while I tell you all about it now.

https://odysee.com/@YvesHonPianist:0/Chopin-Scherzo-No-3-in-cminor:f?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

When my son was 12 years old, I caved to pressure from acquaintances and relatives who said that every boy deserves to have a dog. I worked with a woman whose boyfriend's mother raised miniature dachshunds. We chose a little dapple female and a black longhair male.

The dogs were adorable, but they were very high-strung, which is the nature of miniature dachshunds. My son wasn't in a good place to be responsible for their care. He was struggling with depression, struggling with a school that wasn't a good fit for him, and dealing with the chaos caused by his father's and my amicable but unsettled divorce. His father lived with us on and off because his own life was unsettled. 

There was nothing romantic between my ex-husband and me, it was a roommate situation and not a particularly healthy one. He had his own problems, and he was no help in dealing with the dogs. I was working all the time and the last thing I wanted to do when I came home after working a night shift in a nursing home was deal with needy dogs. I fed them and put down piddle pads on the floor.

The dogs were with us from May 2002 to August 2008. At that point, I contacted Doxie Connection in Cody, Wyoming to have them help me rehome the dogs because I knew I would never be the person they needed. The dogs went to live with some friends of theirs who helped them with foster cases. 

I post dogs in need of rescue on my Twitter account. I used to have a Facebook page dedicated to animal rescue, but after being rather viciously attacked by a person accusing me of not "doing my research" among other things when I mistakenly posted about a missing horse that had already been found, I lost interest in continuing. 

I should have taken the attack with a grain of salt given that the person's handle was Something Something Slashyshipper, and even at the time I could see that they were a miserable twat with nothing better to do than go around spewing verbal diarrhea all over everyone, but I wasn't in a place where I could deal with it. Besides, I'd lost faith that my stupid Facebook page was of any use to animals in need, so I gave up on it.

https://odysee.com/@musica-classica:c/antonio-vivaldi-a-minor-rv499:e?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

By the way, I'm not implying that there's anything wrong with writing fanfiction with my statement about the whatever-shipper who attacked my Facebook page. The declaration that fanfiction is real writing is one of those hills that I'll die on. There are many excellent fanfiction writers whose work I enjoy reading. Unfortunately, there are always miserable, obnoxious jackwagons in any fandom trying to ruin the fun for everyone else. I'm taking a swipe at these people, not at the folks writing their fanfiction creations in peace.

https://odysee.com/@musica-classica:c/antonio-vivaldi-c-minor-rv196:7?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

Let's wrap things up with Vivaldi's beautiful Concerto in C Minor. I hope you have a most excellent Sunday, Easter or otherwise.

~Ornery Owl (Hiding behind Jackie Rabbit) Has Spoken~

Image by donations welcome from Pixabay

The Colors of my Heart

 

Every day I think of you

I remember what good friends you were to me

If you were the color of your spirit set free

I’m wondering what you would be

Lafayette, would this be you?

Did you become something like this when you rose away?

I thought that there would be more time to say

How much I love you every day

 Trinity, my colorful girl

With your beautiful, expressive eyes

Would I recognize your new disguise?

If only I could be that wise

I walk through the darkness of my dreams

With eyes closed fast, not wanting to see

The hopelessness surrounding me

Knowing what I wish can never be

~cie~

Acknowledgments

Picture 1: A Haiga created by me. Please credit Cara Hartley/The Real Cie

Picture 2: Beautiful You Are by Magic Love Crow

 https://magiclovecrow.blogspot.com/

Picture 3: Delightful Donkey by Gina Morley

https://daydreambeliever-gina.blogspot.com/

Picture 4: Carnival Dreams by Shelle Kennedy

http://sunshineshelles.blogspot.com/

This post was created using these prompts:

 November PAD Chapbook Challenge prompt for 11 November 2020 (write a color poem.)

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/2020-november-pad-chapbook-challenge-day-11

Poets and Storytellers United Weekly Scribblings #45

https://poetsandstorytellersunited.blogspot.com/2020/11/weekly-scribblings-45-artistic.html

This poem was posted to these places:

http://poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com

https://lbry.tv/@poetryofthenetherworld:9

 

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is the intellectual property of Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on LBRY. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

 

Want more monodies?

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Sijo: Total Heartbreak

Haiga copyright Cara Hartley 2017

Knowing that I will never see my feline friends again

I feel a total heartbreak that some cannot understand

If they could only know the home I have found here without them

~cie~

NaPoWriMo: write a poem about a pet

http://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-nine-6/

April PAD Challenge: write a "total (blank)" poem

https://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/2020-april-pad-challenge-day-29

A Sijo is a new form for me. The rules can be found here:

https://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/sijo-poetic-form

The Inevitable Legalese and Other Blah-Blah

Content coyright 2020 by Cara Hartley

Please do not repost

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it.

Sharing a link to the poem is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the poem for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

This poem is published on the following sites:

http://animalanarchy.blogspot.com

http://poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com

http://publish0x.com/naughty-netherworld-press

https://bitpatron.co/orneryowl.id.blockstack

http://ko-fi.com/naughtynetherworldpress

http://patreon.com/naughtynetherworldpress

If you enjoy my poetry, grab yourself a copy of my e-book, available from Kindle for 99 cents. https://amzn.to/3aExYT5

Heeding Haiku With Carpe Diem: Senryu: Crystal Pond

Image Source

death falls to darkness

or does the soul perhaps leap

to a crystal pond

~Cie~

Notes:

Today's Carpe Diem prompt involved revising this well-known Haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694).

old pond

a frog jumps into

the sound of water

Today's Mindlovemisery's Menagerie prompt was crystals. We were asked to follow traditional Haiku rules, but, sorry, no can do when such a stellar Senryu using both prompts has hijacked my synapses!

I dreamed that my wonderful cat Trinity, whom I had to have put to sleep three years ago on November 9 due to brain and lung cancer, was here with me. November 9, 2016, was a garbage day in history. I lost my great friend on that day, and Lord Dampnut was elected "president." It was a terrible time to be alive.

She was such a special cat. I miss her big, chonky body, her big, chonky personality, and her big, loud purr.

OctPoWriMo 2019: Day 23: Lost Friends

Photoshop manipulation by The Real Cie

Both of these friends gone too soon

Looking for a home for you

Adopted you myself

Friends from the start

Although you were afraid at first

You were always a big kitten

Eyes of golden-green

Time went by too quickly

Took you from me too soon

Every day I grieve for you

Tiny princess abandoned by her humans

Received with love into our home

In time she became the queen of the castle

Never let me feel alone

I loved you, my best girlfriend

Time robbed me of you too soon 

You are forever in my heart

Your broken-hearted human

Note:

Part of me really hates the pet prompts.

They are the one thing guaranteed to leave me crying--every fucking time--no exception.

Carpe Diem #1766: Mouse

Image Source

a mouse is quite cute

so long as it stays outside

in the house, trouble

~Cie~

Notes:

I have a story now. 

In 2001, the first year that my son and I were in the mobile home (the one we are now clearing out to sell), we had a problem with mice. Fortunately, we also had a mousetrap. 

Our mousetrap was the big gray and white guy, although he was still a juvenile then. His name was Raymond (2001 - 2018). One of my co-workers took in a pregnant cat. Raymond, seen here with his brother Leon (2001 - 2017) was one of the kittens. Leon, obviously, was another of the same litter.

One day Raymond dropped on my pillow what I thought was the back half of a catnip mouse. I was half right. There was no "catnip" to this mouse. I screamed and hurried the mouse ass outside. I can only reason that Raymond ate the head and figured that it would be kind to offer me the butt.

Raymond caught a couple more mice. Then the mice must have gotten savvy to the fact that there was a cat in the house and stopped coming around.

I had to have Raymond put to sleep when he was 17. He had tumors all over his body including his digestive tract and in his forehead. I probably shouldn't have waited as long as I did. 

Leon had to be put to sleep a few months prior. He developed feline infectious peritonitis, which puzzled me because I never let my cats outside, except for Isis, who was semi-feral and I couldn't keep her in. The vet said that the FIP had probably been dormant in Leon's system for his entire life. It can sometimes take many years for it to become active.

Anyway, I never was keen on the bone-crusher type of mousetrap. If you don't have a mouse-head-eater like Raymond living in your house and you have mice, try a humane trap like Ghost Town Grover sells in his general store. If you order through the link, we earn a small commission.

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #101: Photoshopping Haiku: Cricket Silence and Thunder Strikes

Image copyright Geralt

cricket silence

between scraping sounds

autumn begins

my son says prairie thunder

sounds like the sky coming down

~Jane & Cie~

Notes:

Want to just read the poem?

Then hop off the bus, Gus.

Because now I'm gonna discuss much!

First, I went with a Tan Renga for this one. The Haiku stanza was written by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016) and the Ageku stanza was created by me. I liked the contrast between the quiet of the chirping crickets and the powerful sound of prairie thunder.

I have not heard the sound of prairie thunder yet. My son told me that it sounds like the sky is coming down.

This is my son. This picture was taken around his 28th birthday at the Denver Botanic Garden. 

He is the reason we are moving to the Grover Hotel, although, in fairness, I'm the one who found the listing.

And now for our moving horror story. There will be more bitching to come.

My son had the idea that we should move him and the cats to the new place a day before the scheduled move. That way I could be in the townhome to direct the movers and he would be at the new place when they arrived.

Good plan, except these clowns slagged us off.

I suppose I ought to tell the sorry tale from the start.

I filled out a form on one of those "find a contractor" sites describing the work we needed done and was contacted by All My Sons moving company. I'd seen their trucks around. I think they are only in the U.S. but they might be in Canada too. So people in North America, I warn you, do not arrange to have All My Sons do your move. It is one fiasco after another, and if I had only looked on Yelp beforehand, I would have kept looking. Most of their reviews are one star.

First, they arranged for an evaluator to meet with us. I even confirmed the appointment with her. 

She never showed up. I called the office. They apologized and said somehow I had been removed from her schedule. Okay, shit happens, it seemed minor, and she did show up to the rearranged appointment and was pleasant enough. 

I called the office to arrange a date. I was told we were on for the sixth.

My son remembered the evaluator had mentioned a deposit. I called to ask about the deposit and was told we didn't have a date down. 

I said "WHAT???"

The man apologized profusely, put us back down for the sixth, took my deposit via debit card.

I should have known to call these clowns BEFORE we had driven for three hours with meowing cats.

I called when we got to the place and was told that the "BIG BOSS" had taken us off the schedule and had tried to call me several times about this.

I received no calls or voice mails from anyone. I was livid.

My son said that he thought it would be fine to stay there and get the cats settled in. But just a sleeping bag turned out to be too little padding. Fortunately, he found some comforters in one of the storage cases. 

When I got back to Grover in the morning I saw that some of the fields had become temporary lakes. Colorado has notoriously bad soil (bentonite.) The water doesn't absorb well, it just sits on the top.

My son described the thunderstorm. He said he'd never experienced anything like it. He described it as sounding like the sky was coming down on top of the house. He said that normally he would have loved it, but trying to sleep on that floor left him in such pain that he actually felt nauseous.

This room is on the second floor of the building. It will be really grand one day. For the moment, it looks like this. The floor is patently awful to sleep on. My son used to go camping when he was in Boy Scouts. He says that he imagines the only place he will ever camp in the future is in a cabin with a bed and running water, which happens to be my kind of camping.

The cats were very unhappy too. We ended up bringing them back to the townhouse. One of them is asleep in his carrier right now. He loves the carrier as a cat bed, not so much as a carrier.

This is Bart. This photo does not show his giant feet.

The move is rescheduled for this coming Thursday with a different company, who have already provided an email confirmation and will confirm again 48 hours and 24 hours before the move. They are called Homegrown Moving and are only in Colorado. So far, so good.

I really don't feel all that great at the moment. Stress--it's a killer!

Carpe Diem Field of Flowers: Honeysuckle

I can remember

the smell of honeysuckle

New Mexico night

~Cie~

Notes:

I recently completed and am about to submit my manuscript for the Insecure Writers' Support Group anthology contest. The genre is middle-grade historical fantasy/action.

I normally write for adults. I find writing for youth extremely challenging. I ended up opting to write a lightly fictionalized autobiography of myself between childhood and my pre-teen years which centered around my imagination and the fantastical fiction genres which inspired me. In writing about myself I ended up opening a lot of pockets of unresolved grief.

The place I lived between the ages of four and nine was a semi-rural pocket in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where people could have small farms and keep chickens and such. We had a very large yard, a half-acre. Unfortunately, the house was in rather a shoddy condition and cockroaches the size of school buses had a tendency to get inside. The bugs are huge in New Mexico, and I was not keen on that. But I did love the little skinks and horned toads and such. We also had many beautiful plants around such as the honeysuckle vines, and the cicadas would sing us to sleep.

I was a very shy child and did not have many friends. The characters I met in fantasy worlds were my friends, as were my pets and the animals in our yard.

Although I was born in the Western United States and raised in the Southwest for a number of years, my parents were both from New York. When certain relatives would visit, they would ridicule my accent. A New Mexico accent is a bit of an off-Texas drawl. To this day, I bristle whenever anyone askes the seemingly innocent question: "where are you from?" To me, that question is loaded.

Lafayette: My Guide and Friend

You were

My guide and friend

The day I brought you home

You hid until the nighttime came

You learned to feel safe at home with me

I loved you with all of my heart

I felt my heart shatter

When you left me

You were

I will love you forever, Buddy

There are some things you never get over

No matter how many times people insist that you "should"

Shadorma: My Little One

I wish you

 Had never left me

Little one

 I will mourn

 Every day of my life for

 The day I lost you

I will love you always, Lafayette

Forever my little buddy 

The tattoo on my left shoulder in honor of one of the best friends I ever had.

Don't like tattoos?

Don't like how my back looks?

Let me just tell you how many fucks I give.

 

Senryu and Others: A Wish

You came back to me

 You were curled up on the bed

 You were well and whole

Mama misses you

Is there anything quite so fucking useless and impotent as tears?

  Note:

If you have a problem with my use of profanity to express my grief and anger, fuck off and take your sanctimonious bullshit with you. I have no patience for tongue-clucking, finger-wagging, holier-than-thou politesse today.