The Daily Song: Cover Me Up – Jason Isbell

Christine Ray shares a song for the age of quarantine.

Brave & Reckless

Because some days, Jason Isbell is just what your heart and your soul need. . .

Lyrics

A heart on the run keeps a hand on the gun
You can’t trust anyone
I was so sure what I needed was more
Tried to shoot out the sun
Days when we raged, we flew off the page
Such damage was done
But I made it through, ’cause somebody knew
I was meant for someone
So girl, leave your boots by the bed
We ain’t leaving this room
Till someone needs medical help
Or the magnolias bloom
It’s cold in this house and I ain’t going out to chop wood
So cover me up and know you’re enough
To use me for good
Put your faith to the test when I tore off your dress
In Richmond on high
But I sobered up and I swore off that stuff
Forever this time

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People with lower emotional intelligence are more likely to hold right-wing views, study finds — PsyPost

Calico Jack points to research on emotional intelligence and political orientation.

The Psy of Life

New Theory of Why GOP & Dems Fight

Political scientists have studied conservatives and liberals searching for what makes them different. They’ve come up with a lot of stuff. This is another in a long laundry list of consistent traits that cluster for each approach to life, liberty, and the right to racist, misogynistic, single-party, pseudo-democratic minority rule. They seem to include everything from embracing or rejecting change to how round you see a circle as. The topic even fits into the discussion of the Big Five Personality traits and the latest entry in that series, Signs of the Times: Snooping the Yard Displays of Trumpsters.

The observation that left-wing and right-wing adherents tend to differ on so many psychological characteristics is amazing

Alain Van Hiel

This article reviews the findings of a study that investigated the emotional abilities of people on the political continuum. They were interested…

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The unseen world

TheFeatheredSleep sings desire and love.

TheFeatheredSleep

At the corner of your mouth, where it curls in gentle distain, a little spiting mirth, lives the unseen world

In your eyes, polished obsidian run through with black onyx, lies the hearth of your internal combustion

As you breathe, I cannot fail to notice the lovely juxtaposition of your bones gleaming beneath apricot skin, as the buttons on your shirt atest, each breath yawning her fitful glimpse

I cannot help but wonder those stored bottles of delight, high upon your shelf, how your nipples would taste, the flowered breath of your heart of palm

And divining central, that pulsing mandala, reaching her fragrance into dreamworld, the color of aubergine and hibiscus bled in winter river as redwood is lost to time

My artichoke girl, wreathed in wild flowers, your body a temple for this supplicant, as light diminishes, your thirsty form grows spectral, a mango tree heavy in fruiting

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October 26, 2020

Christine Ray – Vulnerability felt intensely

Brave & Reckless

I am living
on caffeine
and anxiety
my diet nutrient-
and comfort-
poor
occasional
sips of hope
curdle instantly
against inflamed walls
of my leaky gut
hands pressed
tightly to my
abdomen
I fight to contain
the acid wash
of my rage
grief
dread

I am living
disability check to
disability check
furtively
shoulders hunched
to shield
my pain
fatigue
shame
what will
happen
to me-
and others
like me-
when we are caught
by the unblinking eyes
of proud boys
and woman of praise
judged lacking
unworthy
useless
in this brave
new world?

© 2020 Christine Elizabeth Ray – All Rights Reserved

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Thrive

TheFeatheredSleep – A wild and passionate sort of thriving

TheFeatheredSleep

For some

Can inhabit and thrive without the dark

I am not one

It is my wont to roam

Feel the tickling urge of excitement

Trained out of obedience, dark crystal inside maze

Blister unused tongue on your soft edges as we blaze

However old I grow, the longing unquenched, as linen will wrinkle in the instant of wearing

a woman holding herself in cupped hand as she turns in twilight

To brave the sultry lights, bangled, hennaed arms above my head

Sate the drums pounding in my chest, find trance in your musk

Lie in perfumed beds with long female limbs

Some would say it’s hedonism

Others simply wouldn’t understand

Why a 9/5 existence I cannot swallow whole

Surely there are prices to be paid

A reckoning when the time comes

I’ve seen it in all children of the night

When their fast urgency catches up with them

Such…

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Signs of the Times: Snooping the Yard Displays of Trumpsters

Calico Jack – A yard full of clues

The Psy of Life

Signs of the Times: Snooping the Yard Displays of Trumpsters

The OCEAN of Trump’s & Clinton’s Personalities

I saw this picture in my Twitter feed and immediately thought of Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling and the OCEAN personality traits. Just look at all the flags, banners, and signs! Surely, such a display says more about the occupant than I’m a conservative racist asshat who has shooting a black person or some liberal hippie commie pinko punk dead on his bucket list, right? Indeed, it does.

I pray that a Black family will buy a house in my subdivision soon so these neighbors will move. pic.twitter.com/zpATuIOyhS

— LongTime🤓FirstTime👩‍💻 (@LongTimeAmy) October 18, 2020

Gosling’s research has focused on using the way that personal space is kept and maintained to interpret your personality using the Big Five Personality Traits otherwise known as OCEAN. He argued that our…

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James Randi Outed Some Truly Heinous Frauds, And For That We Should All Be Grateful – Wonkette

Calico Jack remembers James Randi.

The Psy of Life

James Randi Outed Some Truly Heinous Frauds, And For That We Should All Be Grateful — Wonkette

Somehow the news of James “The Amazing Randi” Randi’s death got past me on the crowded news cycle. Luckily, it didn’t get past the good folks over at Wonkette.

Crowding out really important news stories like this with their BS and constant whining is another reason to decry the Ol’ Pussy Grabbér’s fire hose approach to gaslighting the ever loving bejeezus out of us.

For those who didn’t know, Randi had a kind of cottage industry out of debunking paranormal charlatans of all kinds. He appeared on a variety of TV shows and in many a psych textbook. He was a great example of critical thinking and the use of evidence. He is a tremendous symbol of our times given the willingness of so many in our body politic to accept the…

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Indie Blu(e) Publishing Partners with The Kali Project

The Kali Project, now with Indie Blu(e)

Brave & Reckless

The Kali Project was conceived by indie writers and editors Candice Louisa Daquin and Megha Sood. A dear friend starting a feminist micro press was intrigued and suggested that The Kali Project serve as their inaugural publication. Everyone involved has been deeply moved by the support and enthusiasm the project has received, as well as by the volume of submissions.

The Kali Project has become a much more involved and wonderful project than we anticipated, and it has become clear to all involved that it needs a publishing partner with more experience publishing large, worldwide anthologies.

We are pleased to announce that Indie Blu(e) Publishing has assumed the role as The Kali Project’s publisher. Candice, a founding editor at Indie Blu(e), knows their ability to manage the volume of details of such a project and to produce high quality anthologies, such as We Will Not Be Silenced, SMITTEN This Is…

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She breaks you with every glance your way

TheFeatheredSleep – Desire commands

TheFeatheredSleep

Yearning

You should have your own language

And if you did

At times it would hurt

Like a thousand pins

While the beauty, when it came

Carved your heart into shards of bliss

Just being near you is a feat, the inexorable desire to touch, a reaching in all but reality

You leave me starving for what I have never known

A strange cruelty in desire, sunk deep as well whetted knife

Shall not appear to cut.

Yearning

If you were a woman you’d wear

Form fitting clothes highlighting your impenetrability

You’d be honey too high to reach

And your sting would swell, relentlessly

I think of biting your lips and how

Your blood would taste

Would that I could stop wanting, turn from you, bottle my passion and fling it to sea

Would that I could switch off that burning torch or douse it

Truth is, if you lay…

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A Season’s Song

A duet poem from Lizzi

The Well Tempered Bards

Autumn creeps o’er sylvan hills
Cold winds, smoke tinged
Throw blustery chills
Crimson, russet,
Amber spills
The leaves have blown away

Born of heat into cool
Ye who turns emerald to amber
Listen to the work of the mule
With tools and purpose we hear them clamber

Clamorous winds birth turbid skies
Dark clouds, unploughed
Oe’r shaven field
Far above,
The kestrel cries
The harvest months won’t stay

In the light gather ye the product of summer
The gift of life ye placed in the earth
O’er the hills and in the wind comes the scent of night,
The dusk murmurs
Gather ye tools and rejoice by the hearth

Stars and planets coruscate
Late night, lit white
By sickle moon
Shadows falter
Dance, gyrate
The year is dying away

A death to transcend the realm
O’er cosmic bodies it shatters
In her ye are born,
She who allows the seasons…

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