there may be more than one way to skin a cat
but in the end ….
all you get is ….
a pissed off cat with no fur.

Morning was little more than a red gash across the horizon above the cypress swamp when Raimond Despre and his youngest son Etienne emerged from the marsh grasses and made their way to the trot line, anchored on both sides of the bayou. They worked in silence, from long custom, each knowing the other’s moves and moods. Etienne slipped the canoe into the water, hopped in and let momentum carry him into the languid flow of the water. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of cane he’d cut fresh this morning and bit down, allowing the sweet juices to fill his mouth, then he picked up the paddle and made for the other shore, pulled up the anchoring stake and draped the trot line across his boat, making his way slowly back to the other shore, munching the cane thoughtfully.

Raimon hauled on the line as Etienne approached, swearing under his breath. Every hook was empty. Not just one, not just a few, all 50 of them.

“ ‘das it, we movin’! Dis is a bad place.” He looked around and made a furtive sign.

“Papa,” Etienne shook his head, “ ‘de fish, dey swim all up and down de bayou. If dey bitin’, dey bite here same as anywhere else.”

“Don’ sass me, boy, pull de line in, we goin’ somewhere else where de fish ain’t scairt to swim.

Etienne simply looked at his father, his turqoise eyes clouding with thought. He knew the old man. Once he got some idea in his head, there was no emptyin’ it out again. He sighed, put on his gloves, and pulled the line into the boat, hand over hand, careful to avoid the large treble hooks. Still baited, he noticed. He looked out over the water, just turning bronze with the rising sun. Nothing. Except for the ripples of current, nothing disturbed the surface. This was the time of day when the bass came up to feed. But not today. No carp hugging the edges under the bank, either.

And it was quiet.

Had it always been like this? Non, this was their prime spot. They had other lines and other places, but they’d always hauled a decent catch in here, close to the old landing.

Non. Something was different.

He stretched out his hand and waved his father into the canoe, which sank deep into the water under their combined weights. “You right, Papa. ‘dis place no good no more.”

He dug the paddle blade in deep and pulled it toward him, lifted it out, dipped it in. Strong strokes. He was in a hurry to get away from here. Once they cleared the bend and the landing was out of sight, the light darkened as they slipped into another cypress grove. Raimon kept a lookout for some spot that looked likely. Etienne kept looking up to the branches, relieved at last when he spied his first heron sweeping low over the treetops. It was then he noticed. The sounds of life in the swamp again. Somewhere the splash of a fish as it jumped out of the water for a tasty morsel of insect.

“ ‘dere!,” his papa yelled, and pointed.

It was a perfect spot. The bayou broadened out some, and there were youngish cypress trees with roots planted deep into the swamp, but still small enough they could tie the line and not bother with staking. He made for the nearest side, and coasted alongside the tree. A muted clunk as the canoe gently nudged the tree and stopped. He leaned over, tied the line off, then pushed off again, drifting slowly across stream to the trees on the other side, aiming for another young one with slender roots spaced far apart, like a hand plunging fingers wide, into the mud. His father played out the trot line behind them, letting the weighted hooks sink.

The current was slow today. Not much rain yet this month. Etienne eased the boat into the inlet beside the tree he wanted. As he leaned down to pick up the end of the line, his father shrieked. Just once. It was a sound he’d never heard before, and hoped to the Virgin Mother he never would again. He spun around in the boat. It wobbled in the water, then leveled itself.

“What!” His father’s face! Frozen in a grimace of fear, Raimond was breathing rapid shallow breaths and making the sign of the cross over and over again.

“Non, non, non,” Raimond wept, digging furrows into his seamed face with his fingers. And pointed.

Etienne followed his father’s finger to a hollowed place between the cypress roots. A small pale hand floated just below the surface, deep enough that he couldn’t tell if the body was white or colored. Raimon kept panting, muttering something under his breath, too soft and quick for Etienne to know just what he was saying.

But it didn’t matter. There was a dead body in that tree. His heart hammered in his chest, now suddenly icy cold.

Love

I can’t express

Thoughts

I try to suppress 

Memories

I try to forget

Feelings

I try to deny

Doors

I try to close

Silence

I dare not disturb

I have nothing left to give you

Except my absence

Pacis tribuo tu

Sileo securus

There really can be such a thing as too many cats. The speed at which you will arrive at this tipping point is inversely but exponentially proportional to your bewildering need to deny that this is so.

I arrived at my eureka state of doh! after my first real sleep in 8 weeks, my pride having been reduced by two-thirds, or nearly so. Like all well trained humans, I learned to allow the cats to enforce my phone alarms since I had recently become oblivious even to those. This was tantamount to giving the cats carte blanche to slap me around if I hit snooze (or slept thru the obnoxious ringtone too many times, it’s all the same to a pissed off cat).

Alas and alack, I allowed my phone to discharge overnight and thus turn itself off. Some of my predators are creatures of habit anyway and needed no pavlovian bell ringing to set them off. Those were the ones I gave away with barely a tear of farewell. That left no one on guard duty. Having gone mostly comatose but sleepless for the better part of two months, I slept more soundly than usual. for two and a half days. Many unanswered texts and phone calls later, the dog woke me up. A bit surprising actually because she considers that above her pay grade.

One’s ability to be thoroughly oblivious to the painfully obvious is directly proportional to one’s inherent guyness. This is intuitively obvious only to High Femmes.

How much trouble can one butch get into in one week? Film at 11.

~~solstice meditation for the day: volatile

dreamtime
is different
time
dreamtime is
dreaming forward
in different time
i wake
with your taste
in my mouth

the soundtrack
is approximate
a bowl of alphabet soup
makes more sense

at best
churlishly defiant
except for
ghosts howling
in just killer libido
manifesting narrowly
onto ponds
quietly rolling
stones toward
uphill victory
when xavier yells
zing
and i wake
with the taste of you
in my mouth

the needle skips, lofts,
stutters at the edge
past all limits
to a less unruly hemline

engulfed in your scent
I sleep in dreamtime
my hand
brushing your skin
slip deep into
dreamtime
slip deep into
your time
slip deep
into you
deep
inside you
slow
languid
like trailing fingertips
in the water
casting out ripples
reeling in waves

you thrash against me
my lips
crushing yours
drinking your screams

thrash against wet skin
urgently hipthrust
against the tile

the heat bakes off
steam rises and falls
water beads up
I lick it off
each drop
as it drips
off each nipple like nectar

I wake
with the taste of you in my mouth

gonna rock you baby
rock you all night long
gonna rock n roll you baby
rock you all night long
rock n roll you baby
like your back ain’t got no bone

you gonna be my back door woman
ain’t nobody do you wrong
ima make you my back door woman
do you all night long
when the rooster crow at sunrise
let the black cat out the door

roll me over honey
jus’ like a wagon wheel
roll me over baby
like you roll a wagon wheel
rock n roll you baby
make you moan and reel

rollin and tumblin
rollin’ all night long
gonna rock n roll you baby
rock you all night long
rock n roll you baby
like your back ain’t got no bone

love you up real proper, girl
love you all night long
love you up and love you down, girl
love you all night long
gonna rock n roll you baby
like your back ain’t got no bone

tumble into bed
tumble into love
tumblin’ down moanin’
in the wordless folds of love
tumble in the kitchen
and on the counter too
thread the needle sightless
cuz our love is runnin’ true

Rollin’ in the roses
hide in the shade of day
rollin’ in the bed of roses
hide in the shade of day
gonna rock n roll you baby
til your back ain’t got no bone

i wake
with the taste of you
on my lips

slip away
before dusk
slip in
and slip out
with cricketsong in the meadow
and peepers in the pond
deer at the saltlick
doe eyes glazed by
the moon
light
tumble spineless
timeless
voiceless
into the folds
of love
over under around thru
thread the needle
run love true

the spicy scent
of pure desire
oh the aching want
of need
to possess
to relinquish
to grab and set free
to infuse
to consume
the passion that runs
over under around thru
thread the needle
run love true
tumble spineless
timeless
voiceless
into the folds
of love

salty slick with it
pouring out
from ev’ry
pore
the sweet slap of wet skin
lapping dew
drinking lust
peeling off
the layers
over under around thru
thread the needle
run love true
tremble spineless
before winter’s glove
timeless
voiceless
into the dark folds
of love

steeped in it
steam rises
steam rolls
steam ships
Earl Grey
chai at dawn upon the Thames
fill you up
drink your screams
like honey mead
over under around thru
thread the needle
run love true
plunge
deeper
faster
harder
rock n roll

the stainless snick
of steel cuffs
at your wrists
slick with it
you slip away
before sunrise
gashes the horizon
and bleeds into the long day to come
and the dusk to follow
timeless
voiceless
into the folds of love

~~dietrich winter solstice 2012 b.a.

Will someone please wake up the music media? I’ve been waiting, in vain it seems, for a frontline music publication to pay attention and connect the dots of Madonna’s marketing campaign for the MDNA project. It might as well have been titled, “Going After Gaga”.

Lord knows there are enough dots to connect, dating back to September 2011 when Madonna seemingly emerged from a cocoon, and mused out loud to a reporter at Le Soir, “As for Lady GaGa, I have no comment to make about her obsessions having to do with me because I don’t know whether her behavior is rooted in something deep and meaningful, or superficial.” Just like that, Madonna was back in the headlines. For a few days.

The next step in her campaign all but flew under the radar: she signed a pricey, three-record deal with Interscope for a rumored $40 million, dumping her career-long relationship with Warner to shoehorn her way onto the roster of Lady Gaga’s label. Since the contract is only for distribution and promotion, I can’t imagine that Warner didn’t offer Madge a sweeter deal to keep their marquee artist happy. So I’m not at all sure if business was the only reason behind her choice. Given the series of interviews that followed, I doubt it.

Moving into 2012 with an album to release and a tour to prepare, Madonna began trailing drops of venom wherever she happened to come across a paparazzi willing to ask the Queen of Pop what she thought of the young pretender to the throne. She hit the jackpot early.

Cynthia McFadden was allowed to ask The Question: what did Madonna think of ‘Born This Way’. Madonna then fired off the Diss Heard Round The World: “reductive”, said in a well-rehearsed dismissive tone. To McFadden’s follow-up question, what did that mean, Madonna smirked and smiled, then said coyly “Look it up” as she snickered into an oversized tea cup.

She could have, and should have, stopped right there. Her long thought out and carefully chosen insult took on a life of its own. The Queen of Pop had become a Meme. ‘Reductive’ quickly inserted itself into nearly everyone’s emails, texts and tweets. You really can’t go much bigger than that. But it was not enough for Madonna.

The “gotcha, Gaga” moments came at quasi-regular intervals as the music world awaited the delivery of MDNA. One of the oddest was her response to a question from The Advocate about Gaga’s strong ties to the LGBT community:

“It seems natural,” says Madge, “And I can see why she has a young gay following. I can see that they connect to her kind of not fitting into the conventional norm.”

“I mean, she’s not Britney Spears. She’s not built like a brick shithouse. She seems to have had a challenging upbringing, and so I can see where she would also have that kind of connection, a symbiotic relationship with gay men.”

What does that even mean? Well, never mind, it garnered her some headlines for a few news cycles. When her lead-off single failed to garner big sales or sustained radio airplay, and the video was less than enthusiastically received, Madonna put another piece of her plan in place: divide and conquer.

She went after Perez Hilton, a celebrity professional barnacle and, up until March 2012, an avid champion of Lady Gaga. Suddenly, Perez finds himself in possession of an advance copy of MDNA and begins to release exclusive snippets leading up to the album release on March 26th. Simultaneously all his coverage of Lady Gaga stopped. Dead in its tracks.

Considering that Madonna certainly didn’t need someone like Hilton for promotional purposes, and could have found any number of more established journalists to leak her songs, it appears that her primary motivation was to drive a wedge between Hilton and Gaga, depriving the latter of a lot of promotion going into the kickoff of her tour.

In fact, it seemed that Madonna was largely using the entertainment media for promotions, since she’d had too little time between the release of the record and the start of her tour to do any kind of sustained and credible record promo. She had Hilton to leak song snippets and build buzz, and if she wanted some headlines, all she had to do was to snipe, snark or sneer in Gaga’s direction. There’s no indication that Madonna even recognizes the great irony that most of her press for the last 9 months has come only by dropping Gaga’s name in some cunning, conniving, or cutthroat manner.

And then suddenly it was time to tour, to promote a record with good but not sterling sales, no hit singles and her co-producer criticizing the less-than-stellar resources that went into MDNA, including Madonna’s own time constraints. But Madonna was prepared to seize control of the conversation again.

Two days before MDNA’s opening night, a video of Madonna’s rehearsal went viral: a mash-up of “Express Yourself” and that ‘reductive song, “Born This Way”, finished off with the repeating vocal line from “She’s Not Me”. Production numbers don’t spring up overnight. Madonna had put a great deal of thought and a great deal of planning into this mother of all disses. It’s clear that Madonna really believes that Gaga stole “Born This Way” from her own song and that Gaga truly is just Madonna-lite, an imitation stealing her thunder.

It was a premeditated ambush, one intended to hurt, to humiliate and, if possible, to harm Gaga’s career. It was also supremely petty and vindictive. Not a few bloggers are wondering out loud whether or not she’s carried her resentment too far, even though they may be sympathetic to her argument about the similarities of the two songs.

It remains to be seen whether any leading music publication will look behind the one-way feud, to its framework, and the reasons behind it. Why has the usually business-savvy Madonna made so many miscalculations and poor decisions this time around? Why did Madonna feel she needed to market herself at *anyone’s* expense? How much further is she willing to go against Gaga? Perhaps having to sing an excerpt from “Born This Way” for another 85 nights will convince Madge that she’s now into the realm of diminishing returns.

Only then will Madonna realize that Gaga is not her problem, or rather, that Gaga has become a problem for her in a way she doesn’t recognize. Gaga is no obstacle to Madonna’s legend, which is an established fact, or her continuing success. Madonna has legions of loyal fans who support her. Gaga is drawing from an entirely different well. It isn’t Gaga’s success holding Madonna back. It’s Madonna’s obsession with attacking Gaga at every turn, to the detriment of her own image and career. Instead of aging like fine wine, Madonna’s career is turning into vinegar.