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note to self: by this time tomorrow, another poem should be up.
Also, review use of semi;colon.
Also, review use of semi;colon.
January 17th, 2012
November 20th, 2011
draft one
It took three tries
to get my grandmother's chair,
a faded blue velvet, into
the bed of truck, the first
I had ever driven.
And yes, I suppose
another person around
would've helped, but they
had all already moved on
to their suburban homes or
their graduate dorms and I
was instead scraping an antique
chair along the root-rippled
sidewalk, the homeless woman
next door shouting, "Faggot!"
at me as passed, not offering
any help at all.
I suppose I knew then I wouldn't
be coming back.Like all, hastily planned
and ill-advised misadventures,
and all journeys taken simply because
the alternatives are standing still,
I kept loading my one room of furniture
and my three rows of clothing, the rest
had mostly already been taken by a boy
that decided he needed to go
months before, that happiness
was not this place, which was true
and also not.
I could remember mornings, sitting
in my grandmother's chair while
he cooked or while we laid in
a too-small bed and watched the tree
that bubbled the sidewalk outside.
"This is awful" he would say
about dinner or his boss or the people
and I would smile and wince
at the same time.
The first week we live there,
we spent the whole time on the floor,
smiling and screwing and living
a happiness which, I believe,
cannot be recaptured, as since
I have realized my life is not
about love, but instead,
about things more important
and productive.
On the drive away I did not listen
to the radio or any music, only
listened to the creak of the truck
as it ticked away miles
from the dead bushes with glass panes
underneath, and the smell of beer
and sweat and girls in high-heeled shoes.
It took three tries
to get my grandmother's chair,
a faded blue velvet, into
the bed of truck, the first
I had ever driven.
And yes, I suppose
another person around
would've helped, but they
had all already moved on
to their suburban homes or
their graduate dorms and I
was instead scraping an antique
chair along the root-rippled
sidewalk, the homeless woman
next door shouting, "Faggot!"
at me as passed, not offering
any help at all.
I suppose I knew then I wouldn't
be coming back.Like all, hastily planned
and ill-advised misadventures,
and all journeys taken simply because
the alternatives are standing still,
I kept loading my one room of furniture
and my three rows of clothing, the rest
had mostly already been taken by a boy
that decided he needed to go
months before, that happiness
was not this place, which was true
and also not.
I could remember mornings, sitting
in my grandmother's chair while
he cooked or while we laid in
a too-small bed and watched the tree
that bubbled the sidewalk outside.
"This is awful" he would say
about dinner or his boss or the people
and I would smile and wince
at the same time.
The first week we live there,
we spent the whole time on the floor,
smiling and screwing and living
a happiness which, I believe,
cannot be recaptured, as since
I have realized my life is not
about love, but instead,
about things more important
and productive.
On the drive away I did not listen
to the radio or any music, only
listened to the creak of the truck
as it ticked away miles
from the dead bushes with glass panes
underneath, and the smell of beer
and sweat and girls in high-heeled shoes.
October 20th, 2011
So...
I've decided it's time to chase a muse back to front, since my particular process is good for expunging emotional pain, but bad for finishing something of any length.
So...
My new undertaking will be a book of poetry, potential titles to be listed below.
The working title is:
When I Again Become Feral
and the page of contents should potentially look like this.
1. Leaving Richmond
2. Running
3. Blue Shoes in Dirt
4. Want
5. A Word of Meaning
6. A Post to Lean On
7. Spiders in Fall
8. His Fingers in Earth- An Elegy for my Grandfather's Hands
9. The Drunken Battle of Ballerina
10. My Crepe Paper Flowers
11. While Polishing Brass
12. The Horses' Snoring
13. A Sound Defense of my Dirty Nails
14. When I again Become Feral
15. Ambrosia Mornings
Any title rearranging/suggestions for new will be greatly appreciated, as I'd like the book to be at least 20 poems (if not more) long.
I've decided it's time to chase a muse back to front, since my particular process is good for expunging emotional pain, but bad for finishing something of any length.
So...
My new undertaking will be a book of poetry, potential titles to be listed below.
The working title is:
When I Again Become Feral
and the page of contents should potentially look like this.
1. Leaving Richmond
2. Running
3. Blue Shoes in Dirt
4. Want
5. A Word of Meaning
6. A Post to Lean On
7. Spiders in Fall
8. His Fingers in Earth- An Elegy for my Grandfather's Hands
9. The Drunken Battle of Ballerina
10. My Crepe Paper Flowers
11. While Polishing Brass
12. The Horses' Snoring
13. A Sound Defense of my Dirty Nails
14. When I again Become Feral
15. Ambrosia Mornings
Any title rearranging/suggestions for new will be greatly appreciated, as I'd like the book to be at least 20 poems (if not more) long.
June 28th, 2011
This time last night, I was dressed like a dame, leaning over a single table and plying broiled fish and red beans and rice, waiting for a middle-aged trio to play me to Tango. I would lean on his arm and he would tug me in further with his arm, smiling. I remember it; it was only last night.
And now I am here, alone in the living room, listening to the low strains of a manversation, listening to him run the water so I can't hear him open the fridge and crack open the next Bud Light. I am here, with a computer and HGTV, listening to him sweet talk the dog, now that he's done on the phone. I will be here, alone with House Hunters International, looking at the search history of want ads, apartments for rent that he has searched on my computer, or the one that I bought him as a gift. It's hard to remember which it was.
Last night, I rimmed my eyes with black and purple and flexed my calves whenever they caught the light. He would put his hand on my knee, the candles bouncing not wholly unpleasant shadows off our faces. There was a linger to his eyes I liked, a lean in his shoulders that had shrugged off something unpleasant.
It has been a difficult year, I know. With his father dying and his mother in financial straights, I nodded when he was crying in the kitchen saying he knew he had to stop drinking, but couldn't. Three months later, when I found him at the farrier shop, sitting in his Jeep, throwing bottles on top of bottles and refusing to budge from his mountain of sorrow, I nodded again, but this time, less certain.
Last night, he kissed me in the street, full on. He just turned my mouth and, there, in the middle of the college students in Georgetown, a good five-second one that must've made him blush through his sunburn. When we got home, he slept with me in the hollow of his body, soft, reassuring. I could count on one hand the times either of these things have happened.
I've been reading a lot of Sherman Alexie recently, and I couldn't help notice the parallel, the common drunken thread that critics said was so passe of an Indian tale. Watching the Christmas party unfold in my kitchen window made it something not wholly unlike a book on tape.
I have tried to write poetry, lines and lines describing the creases in his face, the hollows of his eyes and the timbre of his voice as his hand says go and my voice says stop. I have tried to fictionalize this whole account of my love story with a man, an alcoholic, and the television channel we leave on to keep the dogs entertained while we're at work. I can't remember if he ever did put his hand on my knee, or if he stopped me in the middle of the street while the college boys gawked. I know that, if I can ever make the job searches stop, if I can get his hand to throw the lock on his own door, I need to pretend that he did. I need to remember the good moments in basque relief, etched with hands poised over each other's faces, fingers interlocked never needing any moments apart. It is my story, with Sherman Alexie thumbprints creased over every collarbone, rushing towards an inevitably bittersweet end.
And now I am here, alone in the living room, listening to the low strains of a manversation, listening to him run the water so I can't hear him open the fridge and crack open the next Bud Light. I am here, with a computer and HGTV, listening to him sweet talk the dog, now that he's done on the phone. I will be here, alone with House Hunters International, looking at the search history of want ads, apartments for rent that he has searched on my computer, or the one that I bought him as a gift. It's hard to remember which it was.
Last night, I rimmed my eyes with black and purple and flexed my calves whenever they caught the light. He would put his hand on my knee, the candles bouncing not wholly unpleasant shadows off our faces. There was a linger to his eyes I liked, a lean in his shoulders that had shrugged off something unpleasant.
It has been a difficult year, I know. With his father dying and his mother in financial straights, I nodded when he was crying in the kitchen saying he knew he had to stop drinking, but couldn't. Three months later, when I found him at the farrier shop, sitting in his Jeep, throwing bottles on top of bottles and refusing to budge from his mountain of sorrow, I nodded again, but this time, less certain.
Last night, he kissed me in the street, full on. He just turned my mouth and, there, in the middle of the college students in Georgetown, a good five-second one that must've made him blush through his sunburn. When we got home, he slept with me in the hollow of his body, soft, reassuring. I could count on one hand the times either of these things have happened.
I've been reading a lot of Sherman Alexie recently, and I couldn't help notice the parallel, the common drunken thread that critics said was so passe of an Indian tale. Watching the Christmas party unfold in my kitchen window made it something not wholly unlike a book on tape.
I have tried to write poetry, lines and lines describing the creases in his face, the hollows of his eyes and the timbre of his voice as his hand says go and my voice says stop. I have tried to fictionalize this whole account of my love story with a man, an alcoholic, and the television channel we leave on to keep the dogs entertained while we're at work. I can't remember if he ever did put his hand on my knee, or if he stopped me in the middle of the street while the college boys gawked. I know that, if I can ever make the job searches stop, if I can get his hand to throw the lock on his own door, I need to pretend that he did. I need to remember the good moments in basque relief, etched with hands poised over each other's faces, fingers interlocked never needing any moments apart. It is my story, with Sherman Alexie thumbprints creased over every collarbone, rushing towards an inevitably bittersweet end.
June 16th, 2011
I found you again,
burning cigarettes down to your fingers
parked on the edge of a field,
twisting the heads off another light beer
and crying.
We sat in your car
as your headlights got brighter,
not speaking of your father
freshly baked into ash, instead
listening to Van Morrison,
you crying and seeing nothing
and I watching the fireflies
descend from the trees.
When ballerina played,
the song of a girl who dances
despite her weights,
we cried together, because
you wanted me to stay and leave
and breathe in light beer.
If I could, I would knit us
in the tree with fireflies,
so we could waft and wither,
reveling in weightlessness, even only if
we would decide to make it impermanent.
I have lost control of this piece.
I have lost control of your grief.
But when you turned to me,
my head tucked under your chin,
and told me, while drunk and smoking,
that I was your ballerina, and that
you were so lost in a thicket
of your own design, I knew
there would be a morning.
Yes, there will always be cigarettes.
Yes, there will be amnesty for your grievances,
and fireflies and little girls turning
on a pedestal in a spot-lighted dark.
This is how we heal, with cursing and angels.
This is how we know the albatross from the robin,
The bitter from the sweet.
burning cigarettes down to your fingers
parked on the edge of a field,
twisting the heads off another light beer
and crying.
We sat in your car
as your headlights got brighter,
not speaking of your father
freshly baked into ash, instead
listening to Van Morrison,
you crying and seeing nothing
and I watching the fireflies
descend from the trees.
When ballerina played,
the song of a girl who dances
despite her weights,
we cried together, because
you wanted me to stay and leave
and breathe in light beer.
If I could, I would knit us
in the tree with fireflies,
so we could waft and wither,
reveling in weightlessness, even only if
we would decide to make it impermanent.
I have lost control of this piece.
I have lost control of your grief.
But when you turned to me,
my head tucked under your chin,
and told me, while drunk and smoking,
that I was your ballerina, and that
you were so lost in a thicket
of your own design, I knew
there would be a morning.
Yes, there will always be cigarettes.
Yes, there will be amnesty for your grievances,
and fireflies and little girls turning
on a pedestal in a spot-lighted dark.
This is how we heal, with cursing and angels.
This is how we know the albatross from the robin,
The bitter from the sweet.
April 19th, 2011
I tried to do this several weeks ago when
I found a stack of photographs,
You in your fatigues feeding
Your daughter with a green plastic spoon.
And you were both so delighted
By the game of squishing applesauce
between lips that I had to stop
and scrub or dust or something
else that didn't involve the difference
between us at the time of those pictures.
This time last year I gathered my possessions,
boots, clothes, cat, and waltzed back
to the space my parents thought I was living
for a whole four hours while you listened
to Rush, refusing to glance in my direction
while you lined up dead soldiers.
I can't remember now what I cried over
those hours waiting on your doorstep or why
we finally gave up and started waving
our flags.
I suppose what I'm trying to tell you
is that it's quite difficult to decide
whether I should continue hanging pictures
of flowers in your bathroom, and filing
your father's obituary and contracts
you signed with whom you had sworn
was the love of your life, next to my
copies of rejected stories, or love letters
from boys whom I swore was the best love
of mine.
The point of all this really is whether
or not you mind your daughter's third grade
picture peeking behind the high heels
that tend to be the first thing shed
when we fuck? I put your divorce papers
in a crisp green box, labeled, underneath
my cookbook about chicken. Our sides of
the shelves are melding, sir. Soon,
you will realize that our shoes sleep
touching. You've been wearing my socks
for weeks and I've been waiting for you
to say it's time to switch back.
I found a stack of photographs,
You in your fatigues feeding
Your daughter with a green plastic spoon.
And you were both so delighted
By the game of squishing applesauce
between lips that I had to stop
and scrub or dust or something
else that didn't involve the difference
between us at the time of those pictures.
This time last year I gathered my possessions,
boots, clothes, cat, and waltzed back
to the space my parents thought I was living
for a whole four hours while you listened
to Rush, refusing to glance in my direction
while you lined up dead soldiers.
I can't remember now what I cried over
those hours waiting on your doorstep or why
we finally gave up and started waving
our flags.
I suppose what I'm trying to tell you
is that it's quite difficult to decide
whether I should continue hanging pictures
of flowers in your bathroom, and filing
your father's obituary and contracts
you signed with whom you had sworn
was the love of your life, next to my
copies of rejected stories, or love letters
from boys whom I swore was the best love
of mine.
The point of all this really is whether
or not you mind your daughter's third grade
picture peeking behind the high heels
that tend to be the first thing shed
when we fuck? I put your divorce papers
in a crisp green box, labeled, underneath
my cookbook about chicken. Our sides of
the shelves are melding, sir. Soon,
you will realize that our shoes sleep
touching. You've been wearing my socks
for weeks and I've been waiting for you
to say it's time to switch back.
March 16th, 2011
While I am technically billing for this, I've had it up to here (insert fingers to nose level) for computer problems that are impeding me from getting necessaries done when I'm supposed to maintain a weekly minimum of hours. To keep it work-themed, I'll attempt a rift on a large portion of my inventory: etiquette and household hint books from the 18th-19th centuries. Most likely, it will be a little formal for my tastes, but trying different things doesn't always have to hurt. Also for the record, thank you for all the birthday wishes, I'm sorry we don't live closer so I can see you in person.
She had poured over the pages
for recipes on mustard, and how
to get the soot from the inside of lamps
properly, her hands clammy as she curled
her apron between them, feeling grimy
as if she had just polished brass.
They remained silent about whether she should
pin her hair back under her cap first
or go, as she was instructed, and wash
the stain from his trousers, as he sat,
upon his wife's favorite chair in the parlor,
Smoking, though forbidden, with dry, thin lips.
"You have reblacked your hair this morning,"
he said as he ran over a patch of ink
stained on her temple. Even then, she knew
she was not supposed to meet his eyes.
Hmmm, this is one that wants revision, but we can't always be impressive. Until the next computer discrepancy.
She had poured over the pages
for recipes on mustard, and how
to get the soot from the inside of lamps
properly, her hands clammy as she curled
her apron between them, feeling grimy
as if she had just polished brass.
They remained silent about whether she should
pin her hair back under her cap first
or go, as she was instructed, and wash
the stain from his trousers, as he sat,
upon his wife's favorite chair in the parlor,
Smoking, though forbidden, with dry, thin lips.
"You have reblacked your hair this morning,"
he said as he ran over a patch of ink
stained on her temple. Even then, she knew
she was not supposed to meet his eyes.
Hmmm, this is one that wants revision, but we can't always be impressive. Until the next computer discrepancy.
December 31st, 2010
Agh! In what has been a crazy, emotionally charged year, I will take some time out of my mission to find out how to subtract line 4 from line 2A.12 to take the chance to say how much I miss hanging out with you all, and seeing your bright shiny faces, and discussing things that aren't unlike philosophy and other smart topics. I miss being a student. I miss walking in the Fan on a warm night, looking at the houses, and I never thought I'd say that. I miss sitting in the library, watching boys think about hitting on girls while I limped my way through Little Dorrit. I miss seeing boys I exchanged glances with in class on the street, wondering if they remembered who I was, or was ever aware of me in the first place. I've embraced adulthood fully, and am slightly depressed about it in certain moments, and would love for you all to come remind me that I am the person that walked in the dark on Belle Isle, or sang drunkenly on a balcony while someone played a slide guitar with a lighter. I'd even like to remember why I let myself be led to that swimming pool where we all lost our clothes until the super came out, and sliding down a hill in the rain, or even sleeping under a tree in the woods next to an engaged ex, resting my head on his shoulder and wondering if he ever wished to turn his head and remember old times. Boys aside, as they always should be, you all made me feel young, a hard emotion to come by in my life, you all have allowed me to feel free of the world for fleeting minutes, and for that I will never be able to thank you enough. Just thought I'd take a minute to say. Hope everyone has a happy new year, and if you call, I promise that this year, I'll make time to answer.
September 30th, 2010
I do apologize if I've been hard to get in touch with. This is my 8th week straight of working nonstop. In a sorry attempt to keep the creative juices flowing, I leave you with this offering of IOU's and free-write prose/poetry. Enjoy?
Thank You, Steve Harris
It is the perfect arpeggio,
Alternating these 3, 5, 7's
on the strings I have
Never been proficient enough
to name. I see in the space
between my fingers, plucking
steel in concentric circles
a melancholy, a plague forcing
people to march, and then
we switch to 9/7ths, a boot scuff
along cement, cracked from tiny weeds
passing smaller shoes without stopping
to say hello. I dwell on these notes,
watching women outlined in windows
by a light from some recessed closet,
inviting, if only because the street
has shivered cold. I slide to 9/12,
my fingers complaining
of their own clumsiness, a man's hand
in the dark gliding a finger
over a streetlight, wishing
it was a woman's flesh. It is a clenching,
this arpeggio, a spasmed jaw
in guilty euphoria, arms circling
around a body like hands curving
around the edges of a bowl
afraid of breaking, a shameful chord
split into individual notes, each
with their own tragedies. I will never
let you go, he says in 3/5ths, yet
in a neck's slide he is gone,
a catch and release mimicked only
by the turn of the string.
Thank You, Steve Harris
It is the perfect arpeggio,
Alternating these 3, 5, 7's
on the strings I have
Never been proficient enough
to name. I see in the space
between my fingers, plucking
steel in concentric circles
a melancholy, a plague forcing
people to march, and then
we switch to 9/7ths, a boot scuff
along cement, cracked from tiny weeds
passing smaller shoes without stopping
to say hello. I dwell on these notes,
watching women outlined in windows
by a light from some recessed closet,
inviting, if only because the street
has shivered cold. I slide to 9/12,
my fingers complaining
of their own clumsiness, a man's hand
in the dark gliding a finger
over a streetlight, wishing
it was a woman's flesh. It is a clenching,
this arpeggio, a spasmed jaw
in guilty euphoria, arms circling
around a body like hands curving
around the edges of a bowl
afraid of breaking, a shameful chord
split into individual notes, each
with their own tragedies. I will never
let you go, he says in 3/5ths, yet
in a neck's slide he is gone,
a catch and release mimicked only
by the turn of the string.
June 4th, 2010
Sooo...for those of you that didn't know, about a month ago life was extremely difficult for me/all the people I work with. We drove a horse into the literal ground, and he died, and it all sucked an unbelievable amount, to put it unpoetically, which is really the only way I can put it without getting ridiculously emotional. It hammered home the notion that, while we all live and breathe and love these guys, we don't own them and therefore aren't trusted to make any decisions that may or may not effect their overall health. I'm still having a hard time with that one, especially as some of my co-workers are overreacting in all the wrong ways to try and cope. They're horses, that's all. Sometimes we ascribe too many human emotions to them, sometimes not enough. I've also spent a week and a half straight up every night bottle-feeding a two-hundred pound foal that couldn't stand when she was born, so now I'm firmly entrenched in my belief that I should never have children. Eamon and I are no longer together, a decision that seems to have worked out for the best. We still have a lot of love for each other, but we weren't in the right place or frame of mind to be together. We might again someday, we might not. It makes me sad that I can be this clinical about love, and maybe I always will be, but at the moment, I'm still getting over the emotional hump of a horse I cared for being dead and most of my co-workers being moronic. Also, my verve for writing has gone out the window, so by writing this update, I was hoping to at least confirm that I still can string some words together and use to word lexicon in a sentence correctly (which though I haven't done yet, but I'm pretty sure I still could). I'm going to try and post stuff on here of the mucho creativo variety, but for now, non-fiction personal narratives prevail. Hope everyone else is on the bright side of their personal rabbit-holes; I need to see you all soon.
