Karaoke and Writing Group.

Right now, on Family Guy, Peter Griffin and friends are doing karaoke--that song by Journey that starts "Just a small town girl, livin' in a lonely world." Reminds me of last weekend, when I was down at my parents with all my sibs. My youngest sister acquired a karaoke machine (as did my daughter) awhile ago. My mom liked it so much that she got one for herself, so she could sing the gospel songs of her youth with cheesy accompaniment, evidently. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Anyhoo, we all got into it. For my mom (and who am I kidding? I loved it, too) I sang "Moon River," as an homage to my childhood, when my brother and I were relegated to the back of the station wagon at the drive-in, after the kid movie (Born Free?) was over and Breakfast at Tiffany's had started. And, in an eerie synchronicity thing, there happened to be a Carpenter's disk, so we all sang "I'm On Top of the World" and "We've Only Just Begun" (but left "It's Yesterday Once More" alone, because that song is just wrong). However, the best karaoke moments of the evening included "Break Another Little Piece of My Heart," "We Belong" (Pat Benatar, with awesome hand-clapping action), and "Time Warp" from Rocky Horror (my sisters were disturbingly good at the dance for this). On another occasion, my son-in-law did an excellent "I Ran," though without the Flock of Seagulls hairdo, it was missing something. (He does a very good Fred Schneider on "Love Shack," as well, though he insists that he has retired this performance, a loss for us all.)

I'd be interested in hearing the best karaoke experiences of anyone who cares to offer one up. For one thing, it seems like a new karaoke disk would be a great gift for pretty much any occasion, so I want to be able to make an informed decision about which songs rock the most, or whatever.

Poetry Writing Group: Apparently no one in my writing group is worried about the death of poetry, because we all keep showing up with new poems. Today the group was at my house, which meant that last night, as I told my husband, I realized that not only did I need to clean up the house, make delicious and writing group-appropriate food, and decide what to do with Bruiser during the group--he is, shall I say, not poet-appropriate--I also had to write a poem. All of this and more I accomplished, with the assistance of the best husband on the planet. Here's the poem I brought to the group, revised as they suggested.

At least an aperture

We used to spiral past the tower house,
someone's fancy, visible only from the winding drive.
A single stroke of stone by another stroke incised:
crenellated head, a long slit eye as for arrows,
it seemed to be guuarding something,
but kept only its own counsel. I think that even
simple forms contain some little shutter,
some hinge, a pinhole out of which to peer.
The window, so fine a fissure from outside,
must rustle with homely draperies, some resident
with book or candle seeing the bright shifting blur
of peninsula cypress, road flurry. Was there glass?
I think the labor and whoosh of engine,
of tree-stir, tide would pierce that vestibule.
I think it was an opening cut in bone.