a day's eye

last post

2010-05-23T15:08:00.000-04:00

anyone who even rarely glances at this thing would have noticed that the posts have dried up.
thats because i intended to make a smooth transition from this to my new blog, in honor of my big new adventure.
unfortunately ending work took over my life, then getting ready to travel and being in love full time took over my life, then my grandmothers illness took over my life and yesterday, her death took over my life.
but today im waiting for my mother to pick me up so we can go to her house and start the process of packing up the person we love mosts life into boxes-
and i feel helpless, hopeless, headless.
and i can tell the weeks ahead are going to be unstable and difficult.
so im checking something off my list, closing down this blog that has served me so well, recording my life and loves for the past two plus years.
anyone who has followed me this far and wants to stay with me, i've started a new blog, a tumblr, actually, in a super simplified format, just to help me by keeping track of the tiny poetries of daily life as i launch off into something thats almost too big to comprehend:

http://whatwefeelmost.tumblr.com/

the title is based on this, one of my all time favorite poems by Jack Gilbert :

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

thank you for reading. see you on the other side
love
D

i remember the vows i made to my pillows

2010-04-21T14:14:00.001-04:00

touche, garrison.

After a Noisy Night

The man I love enters the kitchen
with a groan, he just
woke up, his hair a Rorschach test.
A minty kiss, a hand
on my neck, coffee, two percent milk,
microwave. He collapses
on a chair, stunned with sleep,
yawns, groans again, complains
about his dry sinuses and crusted nose.
I want to tell him how
much he slept, how well,
the cacophony of his snoring
pumping in long wheezes
and throttles—the debacle
of rhythm—hours erratic
with staccato of pants and puffs,
crescendi of gulps, chokes,
pectoral sputters and spits.

But the microwave goes ding!
A short little ding! – sharp
as a guillotine—loud enough to stop
my words from killing the moment.

And during the few seconds
it takes the man I love
to open the microwave, stir,
sip and sit there staring
at his mug, I remember the vows
I made to my pillows, to fate
and God: I'll stop eating licorice,
become a blonde, a lumberjack,
a Catholic, anything,
but bring a man to me:

so I go to him: Sorry, honey,
sorry you had such a rough night,
hold his gray head against my heart
and kiss him, kiss him.

by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

all bright light and black wings

2010-04-20T12:08:00.000-04:00

Dust

Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor-
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn't elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That's how it is sometimes-
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you're just too tired to open it.

by Dorianne Laux

a poem for us insomniacs

2010-04-16T11:16:00.000-04:00

Vigil

Life is too short to sleep through.
Stay up late, wait until the sea of traffic ebbs,
until noise has drained from the world
like blood from the cheeks of the full moon.
Everyone else around you has succumbed:
they lie like tranquillised pets on a vet's table;
they languish on hospital trolleys and friends' couches,
on iron beds in hostels for the homeless,
under feather duvets at tourist B&Bs.
The radio, devoid of listeners to confide in,
turns repetitious. You are your own voice-over.
You are alone in the bone-weary tower
of your bleary-eyed, blinking lighthouse,
watching the spillage of tide on the shingle inlet.
You are the single-minded one who hears
time shaking from the clock's fingertips
like drops, who watches its hands
chop years into diced seconds,
who knows that when the church bell
tolls at 2 or 3 it tolls unmistakably for you.
You are the sole hand on deck when
temperatures plummet and the hull
of an iceberg is jostling for prominence.
Your confidential number is the life-line
where the sedated long-distance voices
of despair hold out muzzily for an answer.
You are the emergency services' driver
ready to dive into action at the first
warning signs of birth or death.
You spot the crack in night's façade
even before the red-eyed businessman
on look-out from his transatlantic seat.
You are the only reliable witness to when
the light is separated from the darkness,
who has learned to see the dark in its true
colours, who has not squandered your life.

by Dennis O'Driscoll

it is only luck that brought him here

2010-04-15T11:52:00.001-04:00

went on a dorianne laux binger this morning. cant get enough of her heartbreaking words.

Music in the Morning

When I think of the years he drank, the scars
on his chin, his thinning hair, his eye that still weeps
decades after the blow, my knees weaken with gratitude
for whatever kept him safe, whatever stopped
the glass from cracking and shearing something vital,
the fist from lowering, exploding an artery, pressing
the clot of blood toward the back of his brain.
Now, he sits calmly on the couch, reading,
refusing to wear the glasses I bought him,
holding the open book at arm's length from his chest.
Behind him the windows are smoky with mist
and the tile floor is pushing its night chill
up through the bare soles of his feet. I like to think
he survived in order to find me, in order
to arrive here, sober, tired from a long night
of tongues and hands and thighs, music
on the radio, coffee-- so he could look up and see me,
standing in the kitchen in his torn t-shirt,
the hem of it brushing my knees, but I know
it's only luck that brought him here, luck
and a love that had nothing to do with me,
except that this is what we sometimes get if we live
long enough, if we are patient with our lives.

by Dorianne Laux

crepes from here to kingdom come.

2010-04-14T14:21:00.004-04:00

for what im calling my bday/dday im going to have a little picnic partay and im thinking of trying to whip out a massive amount of crepes and some delicious fillings, which might sound complicated but i think its actually simpler than making multiple desserts, can be made ahead of time, lets the guests assemble their own and get all interactive and shit and, and, its french. and im going to france. what?
nevermind. lets not talk about it
anyway ive spent good company hours on the computer becoming an expert in how to twist the wrist to spread batter and how to create a mountain of flour to distribute the eggs without lumps.
i think im ready. the question is whether my kitchen ceiling is ready when i try to flip those mothers.
this should make about 40 crepes, or, if i keep them small, which will take some practice, itll make about 50.

ingredients:

2 2/3 cups whole milk, room temperature
2 cup all purpose flour
6 large eggs
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
nonstick vegetable oil spray

preparation:

mix ingredients in blender just until smooth. Cover batter and chill at least 15 minutes and up to 1 day.
spray 7-inch-diameter nonstick skillet with vegetable oil spray and heat over medium heat.
pour 2 tablespoons batter into pan and swirl to coat bottom.
cook until edge of crepe is light brown, about 1 minute.
loosen edges gently with spatula.
carefully turn crepe over.
cook until bottom begins to brown in spots, about 30 seconds.
transfer to plate.
cover with paper towel.
repeat with remaining batter, spraying pan with oil spray as needed and covering each crepe with paper towel or layer with wax paper
can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and chill.

possible fillings:

roasted bannana
strawberry jam
raspberry jam
peach jam
fig jam
butter and brown sugar “cassonade”
nutella
melted hot chocolate
honey
roasted sliced almonds
roasted sliced almonds
vanilla whipped cream
powdered sugar
vanilla-flavored whipped cream
ricotta
mint

made with me in mind.

2010-04-14T11:21:00.002-04:00

because i expect nothing and what I expect defines me

2010-04-13T11:37:00.003-04:00

56

Why? This is everyone's favorite question. No one ever says:
Because our bags are always packed and we hear footsteps
on the stairs. Because the dark feels unwashed and incomplete
and Maimonides said, "When the Messiah comes war will end,
God's blessings will be on all men." Because we have a God
who never dies and never comes and it's three in the morning
and I'm walking a crying baby around, singing lullabies Grandma
sang to me. Because I expect nothing and what I expect defines me.
Because the world exists without us but without us it is nothing.
Because all my life I've been afraid of the next page. Because
nothing is explained and my old bedroom shadows are thriving
and the floor tilts west toward Lake Ontario where all the snow
comes from. Because it's getting late and I'm in bed, waiting
for Mother to come kiss me good night, like she promised.

by philip schultz

those fucking angels

2010-04-12T15:46:00.001-04:00

Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World

The morning air is all awash with angels . . .
- Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

Who is most among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because

He's astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. "Hey, Ma,

I say, "Can I talk to Poppa?" She gasps,
And then I remember that my father

Has been dead for nearly a year. "Shit, Mom,"
I say. "I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—

How did I forget?" "It’s okay," she says.
"I made him a cup of instant coffee

This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—

And I didn't realize my mistake
Until this afternoon." My mother laughs

At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days

And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.

Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.

Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.
by Sherman Alexie

it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire

2010-04-12T15:43:00.001-04:00

Sunrise

You can
die for it -
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. but

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of china,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.
by Mary Oliver

kim taylor's i feel like a fading light

2010-04-07T13:21:00.000-04:00

In the deep moment of his looking and her looking back

2010-04-05T12:34:00.001-04:00

The Future

On the afternoon talk shows of America
the guests have suffered life's sorrows
long enough. All they require now
is the opportunity for closure,
to put the whole thing behind them
and get on with their lives. That their lives,
in fact, are getting on with them even
as they announce their requirement
is written on the faces of the younger ones
wrinkling their brows, and the skin
of their elders collecting just under their
set chins. It's not easy to escape the past,
but who wouldn't want to live in a future
where the worst has already happened
and Americans can finally relax after daring
to demand a different way? For the rest of us,
the future, barring variations, turns out
to be not so different from the present
where we have always lived - the same
struggle of wishes and losses, and hope,
that old lieutenant, picking us up
every so often to dust us off and adjust
our helmets. Adjustment, for that matter,
may be the one lesson hope has to give,
serving us best when we begin to find
what we didn't know we wanted in what
the future brings. Nobody would have asked
for the ice storm that takes down trees
and knocks the power out, leaving nothing
but two buckets of snow melting
on the wood stove and candlelight so weak,
the old man sitting at the kitchen table
can hardly see to play cards. Yet how else
but by the old woman's laughter
when he mistakes a jack for a queen
would he look at her face in the half-light as if
for the first time while the kitchen around them
and the very cards he holds in his hands
disappear? In the deep moment of his looking
and her looking back, there is no future,
only right now, all, anyway, each one of us
has ever had, and all the two of them,
sitting together in the dark among the cracked
notes of the snow thawing beside them
on the stove, right now will ever need.

by Wesley McNair

domesti-city.

2010-04-05T09:53:00.000-04:00

i just want everyone to know that we are half way through making the first batch of homemade oreos. pictures to follow. after the jump. whatever that means, i just see bloggers writing it all the time.

the mad breaking-heart stickiness—falls away, slowly, unnoticed, the way you lose your taste for things like popsicles unthinkingly

2010-03-31T15:14:00.001-04:00

from washing the elephant by barbara ras
so much good poetry today
take a gander at that beaut from the new yorker.

resolved to remind you that he's been around longer than your love

2010-03-31T12:25:00.006-04:00

= story of my weekend with my mother

To My Son's Girlfriend

I'm tempted to ask
what you see in him.
Although you probably
see the good that I see
I wonder if you realize
how much he is my handiwork,
or which of the qualities
you daydream about in class
are the ones that I take pride in,
his cordiality, for example,
or love of silliness.

It's uncomfortable for me
to think of anyone else
loving him the way I do,
possessing him in a way
that only his mother and I
have ever possessed him,
and I can't deny being jealous,
not so much reluctant
to share or relinquish him
as resolved to remind you
that he's been around
longer than your love,
under construction if you will,
and that each cute trait
or whatever occurs to you
when you hear his name
I feel proprietary about,
like a woodworker
who makes a table
intending to sell it
but prays that no buyer
will recognize its worth.

by Michael Milburn

the way she was carrying the whole of the world's violence and cruelty in her body, or trying to...

2010-03-31T10:15:00.002-04:00

so. amazing.
what an incredible piece.
take the time to read this.

Some of David's Story

"That first time I met her, at the party, she said,
'I have an English father and an American mother
and I went to school in London and Providence, Rhode Island,
and at some point I had to choose,
so I moved back to London and became the sort of person
who says puh-son instead of purr-son.'
For the first person she had chosen an accent
halfway between the other two.
It was so elegant I fell in love on the spot. Later,
I understood that it was because I thought
that little verbal finesse meant
she had made herself up entirely.
I felt so much what I was and, you know,
that what I was was not that much,
so she just seemed breathtaking."

*

"Her neck was the thing, and that tangle of copper hair.
And, in those days, her laugh, the way
she moved through a room. Like Landor's line—
she was meandering gold, pellucid gold."

*

"Her father was a philosopher,
fairly eminent in that world, and the first time
I was there to dinner, they talked about California wines
in deference to me, I think, though it was a subject
about which I was still too broke to have a thing to say,
so I changed the subject and asked him
what kind of music he liked. He said, 'I loathe music.'
And I said, 'All music?' And he said—
he seemed very amused by himself but also
quite serious, 'Almost all music, almost all the time.'
and I said 'Beethoven?' And he said
'I loathe Beethoven, and I loathe Stravinsky, who loathed Beethoven.'''

*

"Later, in the night, we talked about it.
'It's feelings,' she said, laughing. 'He says
he doesn't want other people putting their feelings into him
any more than he wants,' and then she imitated
his silvery rich voice, 'them putting their organs
into me at great length and without my consent.'
And she rolled onto my chest and wiggled herself
into position and whispered in my ear,
'So I'll put my feelings in you, okay?'
humming it as if it were a little tune."

*

"Anyway, I was besotted. In that stage, you know,
when everything about her amazed me.
One time I looked in her underwear drawer.
She had eight pair of orange panties
and one pair that was sort of lemon yellow, none of them
very new. So that was something
to think about. What kind of woman
basically wears only orange panties."

*

"She had the most beautiful neck on earth.
A swan's neck. When we made love, in those first weeks,
in my grubby little graduate student bed-sit,
I'd weep afterward from gratitude while she smoked
and then we'd walk along the embankment to look at the lights
just coming on—it was midsummer—and then we'd eat something
at an Indian place and I'd watch her put forkfuls of curry
into that soft mouth I'd been kissing. It was still
just faintly light at midnight and I'd walk her home
and the wind would be coming up on the river."

*

"In theory she was only part-time at Amnesty
but by fall she was there every night, later and later.
She just got to be obsessed. Political torture, mostly.
Abu Ghraib, the photographs. She had every one of them.
And photographs of the hands of some Iranian feminist journalist
that the police had taken pliers to. And Africa,
of course, Darfur, starvation, genital mutilation.
The whole starter kit of anguished causes."

*

"I'd wake up in the night
and not hear her sleeper's breathing
and turn toward her and she'd be looking at me,
wide-eyed, and say, as if we were in the middle of a conversation,
'Do you know what the report said? It said
she had been raped multiple times and that she died
of one strong blow—they call it blunt trauma—
to the back of her head,
but she also had twenty-seven hairline fractures
to the skull, so they think the interrogation
went on for some time.'''

*

"—So I said, 'Yes, I can tell you exactly
what I want.' She had her head propped up on one elbow,
she was so beautiful, her hair
that Botticellian copper. 'Look,' I said,
'I know the world is an awful place, but I would like,
some night, to make love or walk along the river
without having to talk about George fucking Bush or
Tony fucking Blair.' I picked up her hand.
'You bite your fingernails raw.
You should quit smoking. You're entitled, we're entitled
to a little happiness.' She looked at me,
coolly, and gave me a perfunctory kiss
on the neck and said, 'You sound like my mother.'''

*

"We were at a party and she introduced me
to one of her colleagues, tall girl, auburn hair,
absolutely white skin. After she walked away,
I said, 'A wan English beauty.' I was really thinking
that she was inside all day breathing secondhand smoke
and saving the world. And she looked at me
for a long time, thoughtfully, and said,
'Not really. She has lymphoma.'
I think that was the beginning of the end.
I wasn't being callow, I just didn't know."

*

"Another night she said, 'Do you know
what our countrymen are thinking about right now?
Football matches.' 'Games,' I said. She shook her head.
'The drones in Afghanistan? Yesterday they bombed a wedding.
It killed sixty people, eighteen children. I don't know
how people live, I don't know how
they get up in the morning.'"

*

"So she took the job in Harare and I got ready
to come back to Berkeley, and we said we'd be in touch
by e-mail and that I might come out in the summer
and we'd see how it went. The last night
I was the one who woke up. She was sleeping soundly,
her face adorably squinched up by the pillow,
a little saliva—the English word spittle came to mind—
a tiny filament of it connecting the corner of her mouth
to the pillow. She looked so peaceful."

*

"In the last week we went to hear a friend
perform some music of Benjamin Britten.
I had been in the library finishing up, ploughing
through the back issues of The Criterion and noticing
again that neither Eliot nor any of the others
seemed to have had a clue to the coming horror.
She was sitting beside me and I looked at her hands
in her lap. Her beautiful hands. And I thought about
the way she was carrying the whole of the world's violence
and cruelty in her body, or trying to, because
she thought the rest of us couldn't or wouldn't.
Our friend was bowing away, a series of high, sweet,
climbing and keening notes, and that line of Eliot's
from The Wasteland came into my head:
'This music crept by me upon the waters.'''

By Robert Hass

for my mother on her 66th birthday

2010-03-29T11:00:00.004-04:00

Acceptance Speech

I want to thank my mother for the hurried mornings in pre-dawn darkness

I learned that its always worth taking the time to slice the apple

that you should run through the checklist twice

that the shine on your shoes matters

I want to thank my mother for nights in the smoke-stale air under stiff sheets at third rate hotels

I learned that there is always a better room and you should ask for it

that underwear can be washed in a sink

that windows should be able to open

I want to thank my mother for the hours by a ring in the bone cold, or mosquito buzzing heat

I learned that you should always be prepared for rain

that you want someone standing in your corner to whisper a warning before you face those who will judge you.

And you’re lucky if that person is your mother.

an open letter to my cubicle

2010-03-26T13:35:00.002-04:00

you have to check this out. right now. hysterical letters written by pissed off people to people or entities who are likely to never respond. the top one on the infuriating dancing of aging hippies is my favorite, read it here.
or for example, this one, which hits home:

February 1, 2010
Dear Cubicle,
It's fun when an artist shocks you with their prescience. I believe it was you that Henry David Thoreau foresaw when he said that "the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation." I used to tell myself that I would never live a life of quiet desperation; I would scream my desperation for everyone to hear. But you've tamed me. When I'm with you my pupils dilate, my breath falls into calm repetition and my spirit bleeds.
There is not one thing about you that I like. Your steel drawers are joyless, your calendar taunts me and your walls are shabby. Could there be a lazier expression of light than the harsh glow from that buzzing fluorescent tube you keep encased in a plastic grate? I'm Irish for crying out loud. My skin reflects light poorly enough under soft conditions, beneath you I look like a milk-filled jellyfish.
The decorum that my co-workers have hung about your entrance is misguided and cruel. That picture of San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobli doesn't look anything like me. While I do have dark hair, dark eyebrows and perennial two day stubble, I had hoped that this made me look more like Matthew Fox from Lost than a balding Argentinean. And I'm sure it was good fun for them to pin my quote from last week's happy hour on your outside wall, but when I said that "the decade since I graduated college has been nothing but bad news and depressing life lessons," it was uttered in a state of honest sadness, it was not meant to be ironic, hyperbolic or funny in any way.
There are a couple of small comforts that have made short clips of my time with you at least tolerable. I enjoy reading my page-a-day Onion desk calendar, although it was such a crutch against your dogged grind that I burned through the full year's worth of entries in early March. I'm thankful that a cleaning crew comes by dark of night to empty my rubber trash can and sweep up all the crumbs and hairs that accumulate in my keyboard, although I'm certain that they're stealing my mints.
If I hate you so much, why do I spend the waking hours of my prime locked in this terrible relationship? Nobody is forcing me to return to you everyday, it's become a conditioned response to waking up. What if I stopped going? What if I up and left? I could become a Park Ranger and spend my time in the outdoors. Surely I'm qualified to be a Park Ranger, with minimal training I could become quite skilled at telling people to ask their dogs to quiet down. Or I could double-down and dig my way out. If I spent my nights and weekends with you they'd move me into that office with the blinds and the fake plant. I bet I could be happy in that office, gazing upon the landscape print that hangs above my desk and doesn't offend anyone. From there I could look out at you through my glass wall. I could take your new prisoner out to lunch and tell them everything. I'd tell them about how you are, and I'd tell them about what you do.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Easley

taste pain, roll it on my tongue, it’s good

2010-03-26T13:23:00.001-04:00

my idea of a welcome spring poem. even though its friggin snowing out.

Daffodils

The day the war against Iraq begins
I’m photographing the yellow daffodils
With their outstretched arms and ruffled cups
Blowing in the wind of Jesus Green

Edging the lush grassy moving river
Along with the swans and ducks
Under a soft March Cambridge sky
Embellishing the earth like a hand

Starting to illustrate a children’s book
Where people in light clothes come out
To play, to frisk and run about
With their lovers, friends, animals, and children

As down every stony backroad of history
They’ve always done in the peaceful springs
—Which in a sense is also hell because
The daffodils do look as if they dance

And make some of us in the park want to dance
And breathe deeply and I know that
Being able to eat and incorporate beauty like this
I am privileged and by that token can

Taste pain, roll it on my tongue, it’s good
The cruel wars are good the stupidity is good,
The primates hiding in their caves are very good,
They do their best, which explains poetry.

What explains poetry is that life is hard
But better than the alternatives,
The no and the nothing. Look at this light
And color, a splash of brilliant yellow

Punctuating an emerald text, white swans
And mottled brown ducks floating quietly along
Whole and alive, like an untorn language
That lacks nothing, that excludes

Nothing. Period. Don’t you think
It is our business to defend it
Even the day our masters start a war?
To defend the day we see the daffodils?

-Alicia Ostriker

joe purdy wrote a song about me. clearly.

2010-03-25T13:25:00.003-04:00

found this by searching for a video of "why do i" also by purdy. great song. couldnt find a vid but you should go get it.

i'm afraid the way i'll miss you will be this obvious.

2010-03-23T11:36:00.001-04:00

Emptying Town

I want to erase your footprints
from my walls. Each pillow
is thick with your reasons. Omens

fill the sidewalk below my window: a woman
in a party hat, clinging
to a tin-foil balloon. Shadows

creep slowly across the tar, someone yells, "Stop!"
and I close my eyes. I can't watch

as this town slowly empties, leaving me
strung between bon-voyages, like so many clothes
on a line, the white handkerchief

stuck in my throat. You know the way Jesus

rips open his shirt
to show us his heart, all flaming and thorny,
the way he points to it. I'm afraid

the way I'll miss you will be this obvious.

I have a friend who everyone warns me
is dangerous, he hides
bloody images of Jesus
around my house, for me to find

when I come home; Jesus
behind the cupboard door, Jesus tucked

into the mirror. He wants to save me
but we disagree from what. My version of hell
is someone ripping open his shirt

and saying, Look what I did for you. . .

by Nick Flynn
a poet i havent heard from in a little bit but who i loved, loved, in college. good to be reminded.

I’d make every great mistake I could and earn this lovely moment

2010-03-23T11:25:00.004-04:00

Tatyana

She leaves the room. Onegin writhes
On stage, ashamed of his emotion.
He scorned her as a young girl.
Now he's mad about her! But she's
Married, rich, so stern and cold. . .
I lean forward in my opera seat.
There goes me. And isn’t that
Every man I loved in vain?
The cast bows to wild applause.
Our Tatyana smiles, steps forward
To catch a bouquet of red roses.
I button my coat, grab my purse,
And make my slow way down the aisle
Of well-dressed, gray-haired couples
Watching their steps with downcast eyes.
I bet I'm not alone in wishing
I could go back in time, and break
A few cold hearts that broke mine
With all my hard won understanding
Of the game of love, its rules
And stratagems, and power plays.
Then through the open lobby doors
Where the crowd hesitates, tying
Scarves or pulling on wool gloves,
I see the promised snow’s begun
And someone’s whistling an aria
From the first act. A sweet joy
Rushes through me. No, of course
I’d fall in love the same way.
I’d make every great mistake
I could, and earn this lovely moment
Walking home through fresh snow
My head full of unsingable music,
Remembering this one and that one
Who made me feel by feeling nothing.

by Maura Stanton
an interview about the poem here

love loving so much after that

2010-03-23T09:14:00.004-04:00

Feeling highly negative today and this poem i just came across feels just right. Also, I like that doilies follow nazis.

The Pleasures of Hating

I hate Mozart. Hate him with that healthy
pleasure one feels when exasperation has
crescendoed, when lungs, heart, throat,
and voice explode at once: I hate that! —
there's bliss in this, rapture. My shrink
tried to disabuse me, convinced I use Amadeus
as a prop: Think further, your father perhaps?
I won't go back, think of the shrink
with a powdered wig, pinched lips, mole:
a transference, he'd say, a relapse: so be it.
I hate broccoli, chain saws, patchouli, bra—
clasps that draw dents in your back, roadblocks,
men in black kneesocks, sandals and shorts—
I love hating that. Loathe stickers on tomatoes,
jerky, deconstruction, nazis, doilies. I delight
in detesting. And love loving so much after that.

by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

the air as an invisibility draped with sounds

2010-03-21T08:41:00.002-04:00

last night felt like the first night of the next phase. spring. rebirth. reinvention. rewhatever.

All Night Long

The First warm evening in spring—the evening
on which you no longer feel the air's
temperature and are only aware
of it as an invisibility draped
with sounds: laughter from open windows,
the idle of cars pausing at the curb,
abdominal wails presaging a cat
fight in some dark, disputed corner; draped
with smells: through a side door propped ajar fish
hitting hot oil, dust or mold from the pit
of a deserted construction site, the soil
in front gardens after rain, released
and crumbled from beneath by the numberless
green thumbs of spring's long reach up
out of the ground. A young man waits on the stoop
of a six-floor walkup with the posture
of someone who expects to wait
for a long time. What you imagine to be
his earthly possessions are beside him
in a shopping cart, along with a roll
of rubber foam, neatly tied. You imagine
he had come knowing there will be no bed,
only floor space in one of the apartments
above. You can't imagine more than this, so you
walk up the fading street to where the first
crocuses are out, each one a small, violet-shuttered
hesitation imbued with its own brevity,
knowing neither happiness nor grief.

by Anne Pierson Wiese

homemade oreos

2010-03-19T17:49:00.001-04:00

happening in my life, possibly the specialty item of my cafeplace. possibly attempting them this weekend. watch out.

COOKIES

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, melted
1 egg
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

1. In a medium bowl, whisk the butter and the sugar until combined. Whisk in the vanilla and melted chocolate. Add the egg and stir until well blended.
2. In another bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir to blend them. Using a wooden spoon, stir the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture. The finished dough should feel like Play-Doh. Cover the dough with plastic, and set aside for 1 hour or until firm.
3. Place the dough on a long sheet of parchment paper. Use your hands to shape it into a rough log, about 10 inches long and 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Place the log at the edge of the parchment. Roll the parchment around the log. With your hands on the paper, roll the dough into a tighter log, keeping the diameter the same.
4. Refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours, or until it is firm enough to slice without crumbling
5. Set the oven at 325 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
6. Remove the dough from the paper. Cut the log into 32 slices, each a quarter-inch. Set them on the baking sheets 1 inch apart.
7. Bake the cookies for 20 to 25 minutes, checking them often after 15 minutes, or until they are firm when touched in the center.
8. Cool completely on the sheets.
allow 1 hour for the dough to firm before shaping, then several more hours for it to chill before slicing. You can refrigerate the dough for up to 1 week or freeze it for 1 month

FILLING
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon milk
Pinch salt

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter on low speed for half a minute. Add the vanilla and confectioners sugar and beat until smooth
2. Beat in the milk and salt. The filling will look and feel like spackle
3. Place 1 tablespoon of filling on the flat side of 16 cookies. Press the remaining 16 cookies on the filling, flat sides against the cream, to evenly distribute the filling.
4. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

like watching a fern unfurl

2010-03-19T09:38:00.000-04:00

had an impossible discussion about death and loss and forever last night. and then this morning thought of this poem id seen a while ago. if i ever have to write about death, i hope it is this direct. this raw. this unrelenting.

Slowly

I watched a snake once, swallow a rabbit.
Fourth grade, the reptile zoo
the rabbit stiff, nose in, bits of litter stuck to its fur,

its head clenched in the wide
jaws of the snake, the snake
sucking it down its long throat.

All throat that snake—I couldn’t tell
where the throat ended, the body
began. I remember the glass

case, the way that snake
took its time (all the girls, groaning, shrieking
but weren’t we amazed, fascinated,

saying we couldn’t look, but looking, weren’t we
held there, weren’t we
imagining—what were we imagining?)

Mrs. Paterson urged us to move on girls,
but we couldn’t move. It was like
watching a fern unfurl, a minute

hand move across a clock. I didn’t know why
that snake didn’t choke, the rabbit never
moved, how the jaws kept opening

wider, sucking it down, just so
I am taking this in, slowly,
taking it into my body:

this grief. How slow
the body is to realize.
You are never coming back.

by donna masini

Outlook meeting invite sent on march 18, subject: talk with daisy

2010-03-18T19:20:00.000-04:00

Body of email:

Hi Thekla :)
Does this time work for you to have a chat, either in the conference room or taking a walk? I know it’s Friday and will naturally be insanely busy and I actually think Torrey and the team want to do lunch tomorrow at 1 so if you would prefer we can wait until the end of the day and talk then. Or earlier. You let me know. It isn’t “urgent” but I would like to talk to you alone tomorrow if possible.
Thank you Thekla...

It has begun.

we are undressing for a swim

2010-03-18T12:58:00.000-04:00

The Name of a Fish

If winter is a house then summer is a window
in the bedroom of that house. Sorrow is a river
behind the house and happiness is the name

of a fish who swims downstream. The unborn child
who plays the fragrant garden is named Mavis:
her red hair is made of future and her sleek feet

are wet with dreams. The cat who naps
in the bedroom has his paws in the sun of summer
and his tail in the moonlight of change. You and I

spend years walking up and down the dusty stairs
of the house. Sometimes we stand in the bedroom
and the cat walks towards us like a message.

Sometimes we pick dandelions from the garden
and watch the white heads blow open
in our hands. We are learning to fish in the river

of sorrow; we are undressing for a swim.

by Faith Shearin

really loving this poet lately, featured heavily on TWA, read more on her site here

The theft that could have happened doesn't

2010-03-17T11:43:00.000-04:00

after I left the office yesterday a man pulled a knife on the T.
He was enormous, a looming presence, wearing a hood pulled up over his head under a long trench coat, with dark leather gloves on (it wasnt that cold) and big dark sunglasses (on the t, at night) and he was carrying an empty red milk crate, of all things.
if you could have patched together the cliche of a suspicious looking person, he would have been the result. and when he got on the T behind me i felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. but if i got off the T every time someone slightly deranged got on id never get anywhere.
its boston.
but this was different. and i knew it. i just tried to trust that things are almost always ok.
there was no question he was ominous. but not menacing, he seemed focused, quiet, deliberate as he began moving away from me down the length of the car to the m iddle doors. and then he got off. and i watched him walk back up the platform towards me and got back on again right next to me, same door hed originally used. and then again, using the crate to shove the packed people out of his way, he moved away from me down the length of the car as we moved betwen stops and when the doors opened he got off and walked back to the front, and boarded. this happened three times and on the third time we were shoulder to... shoulder, though he was significantly taller than me, and he began to move again, past the same people who by now were noticing this strange man's strange behavior, and he bumped the man standing next to me to get him to move, a young professional type with his girlfriend holding his arm, who goes, 'hey man, I can't move, there's a door right there' and without saying a word the man pulled a switch blade out of his trench coat pocket and snapped it open.
It was right next to my face. aimed at the young guy, but the blade itself was no less than a foot from me. And for a moment no one moved and I wasn't able to speak so I reached around and started frantically tapping the driver and the driver goes 'WHAT?' which then made the guy with the knife turn towards me, saw me tapping the driver, gave me a look through his sunglasses that i dreamt about on repeat all night, and then shoved his way out the door and ran off the platform.
at which point the guy who had the knife pulled on him started screaming 'he has a knife' and his girlfriend became hysterical and then there was mass melee.
i was so grateful to sleep in strong arms last night, so desperately grateful. but i woke up exhausted from dreams of running. and only todays poem from the writers almanac-one more reason to believe that garrison keillor is in my brain- has given me back my breath. applicable not just to having knives pulled on you in the safest part of boston, but to life in general.

Trust

It's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.

By Thomas R. Smith
read more here

i am your water, i am your air

2010-03-17T11:26:00.000-04:00

wow. check this out. let it load and then when the line appears, move your mouse. experiential music

the days i love aren't mine, though if i get inside one, i stay

2010-03-16T11:06:00.000-04:00

What Isn’t Mine
—shibui

Near a house in the canyon
where the meadow dips
and open-range cattle
loiter on the road,
a sign insists
COWS NOT MINE.

We used to laugh
and start to name other things
not ours: the rock,
the bighorn sheep, the pines,
the river.

You are not mine,
though I bend my life
to you. Our daughters
are not mine, not ours,
not owned. The days I love
aren’t mine, though
if I get inside one, I stay.

Not mine the mountains
that shore my seeing,
their snow, the clouds
they catch and release.

When I was younger, drinking sky
without aftertaste, I thought,
“all of it—mine,”
and it was. All

my “borrowed view,”
the Japanese might say
in a language
with so many words
for beauty—one that’s full
of time.

by veronica patterson
read more here

on grabbing life by the beans:

2010-03-12T15:35:00.000-05:00

The other night i started a conversation with my love that i frankly wasnt ready to have. the question posed was: what are the reasons for NOT going to italy. not for a vacation. but in life. to try to have a life, for some period of time, in a place weve both wanted to go, specifically the amalfi coast. so we're sitting at my wee little kitchen table on stools dipping pieces of cheddar into almond butter and calling it dinner(just one reason i love him is his unabashed creative consumption of nut butters) trying to figure out what is stopping us from pursuing a version of heaven. it seemed crazy. i tried to be realistic. money (but it could be worked around) jobs (but wed be happy doing anything and anything could be found) visas (but those could be attained somehow)... he kinda had me.
but for whatever square reasons, i balked. blame it on the taurus in me. i couldnt imagine packing a bag and getting off in fiumicino airport with no idea where or what or how or whether it was legal. i actually couldnt maintain eye contact with him i was so overwhelmed.
and im regretting it now. so much. because what i was forgetting is that we would be together. i always forget this. and not just with him, with everyone in my life. i see everything i do as being alone, every challenge i face i imagine myself being completely alone as i face it. and im not. i have an enormous web of supportive friends and family and even if theyre not WITH me, theyre with me. and if i forget that then so much seems too big to plan or manage. meanwhile this idea is maybe the most beautiful suggestion ive ever heard. so beautiful its terrifying. i fear idealism. i hate hoping for the best and ending up with something less than that, or, worse than disappointing myself, disappointing him. what if we go to the best place on earth in ideal conditions, together, and that doesnt actually make him happy? what if we pursue happiness in its purest form, and we dont find it?
so instead, what, im just going to sit in brookline and bitch about the weather working in a job that half makes me happy half makes the rest of the world happy and buy my half coffee half hot chocolates at the local 7/11? when i could be getting my morning shot of coffee standing up at a cafe bar living in a one room apt above a bakery or in a farm house on the amalfi coast harvesting, in a cafe, in a tourist agency or teaching or whatever but coming home to the person i see a future with each night? HEAVEN. or any variation of that = HEAVEN.
so screw the visa that i dont know how ill get, screw fear of uncertainty, fear of judgement, fear of landing on the other side of the rainbow in a heap with no money and no idea of where to go next. i want to pursue happiness if its a possibility.
and it is possible to do this in a way that isnt PURE risk, if we hopped around to a few farms for a little bit just spending money on our travel, learning about food, learning about farming, and then, at some point, maybe we would meet someone or find someplace or EAT something that made us think: we could DO this.
which brings me to the point which is that one of the reasons this conversation began was talking about foods that i havent found here that i remember from italy, wondering why, with everything thats imported, certain things havent taken off. and i was saying it would be so great to move to italy, learn all about xyz and then bring it back to the states, educate people here about a process, a flavor, something that would open people's minds. and mouths.
the item that started it all was a simple dip/spread made from white beans and green olive oil, pepper, salt, spread on toast... ugh. so good. and today i found a variation of this made by blending a can of white beans (drained) with lemon juice and peanut butter.
symbolism anyone?
i'm making it.
ill let you know.

White Bean and Nut Butter Dip

- a small can (400 g) of white beans
- 1 Tbsp peanut butter
- 1 Tbsp sesame butter (or just another of peanut)
- the juice of a lime
- 2 squirts of chili sauce
- 2 splashes of Worcestershire sauce

Drain the white beans, reserving the liquid for later. In a food processor, combine the white beans with the nut butters and the lime juice. Blend until smooth. If you find the mixture a bit too thick, add a little of the reserved bean liquid until the desired consistency is reached.

Add the chili and Worcestershire sauces, mix again. Taste and adjust the seasoning to your liking. Serve with little sticks of vegetables, toasts or crackers.

childs perspective on homosexuality: thats the very first time ive seen husbands and husbands! and then they go play ping pong. and youre invited.

2010-03-11T15:47:00.000-05:00

watch this.

"Oh life! Can you blame me for making a scene?"

2010-03-11T11:47:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: this is an excerpt from an email i just sent to my love. I always feel wierd and cheap taking thoughts i wrote TO someone and putting them in a blog post but the point is, its how i feel and i dont think i could say it any better, or maybe i could, later, but right now these are my thoughts and i just happen to have written them first to a specific person but i dont see a point in rewriting it in a different way. i dont think you mind. i just had to say all that. read on:

I found this poem this morning by tony hoagland who i am big time liking these days (obviously, ive posted three poems of his in the last 24 hours, i might as well just dedicate the month to him) and it really got me all pumped up.
i. related.
because i fucking hate that phrase, "dont take it personal" (all the more offensive for its bad grammar).
I dont consider myself thin-skinned, but ive always, even as a kid, been too aware not to take things personally, ive always felt the stab in someones voice, seen the vulnerability in eyes.
and whats the point if you dont at least try to become personally invested in what you do and who you deal with?

"Oh life! Can you blame me for making a scene?"
...yeah.
yeah!

Personal

Don’t take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal—

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain—
And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,
with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,
with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness
Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said
at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t
believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture
served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all
and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure
while the air fills up with I’m-Sorries

like wheeling birds
and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me
for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon
disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard;
barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else
to take it personal too.

by Tony Hoagland

you can feel less alone in the night

2010-03-11T10:07:00.000-05:00

Night Walk

The all-night convenience store’s empty
and no one is behind the counter.
You open and shut the glass door a few times
causing a bell to go off,
but no one appears. You only came
to buy a pack of cigarettes, maybe
a copy of yesterday’s newspaper –
finally you take one and leave
thirty-five cents in its place.
It is freezing, but it is a good thing
to step outside again:
you can feel less alone in the night,
with lights on here and there
between the dark buildings and trees.
Your own among them, somewhere.
There must be thousands of people
in this city who are dying
to welcome you into their small bolted rooms,
to sit you down and tell you
what has happened to their lives.
And the night smells like snow.
Walking home, for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It’s unendurable, unendurable.

by Franz Wright

but I can see what I would miss in leaving—

2010-03-10T18:20:00.000-05:00

Did i say two tremendous poems? i meant three. he's competing with dunn for favorte poet. i love this. uncomfortably wonderfully honest. i think he's reading somewhere in Boston this spring but i cant figure it out. ploughshares is being cagey. i will prevail though, and ill see him live. so help me i will.

Windchime

She goes out to hang the windchime
in her nightie and her work boots.
It's six-thirty in the morning
and she's standing on the plastic ice chest
tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch,

windchime in her left hand,
hammer in her right, the nail
gripped tight between her teeth
but nothing happens next because
she's trying to figure out
how to switch #1 with #3.

She must have been standing in the kitchen,
coffee in her hand, asleep,
when she heard it—the wind blowing
through the sound the windchime
wasn't making
because it wasn't there.

No one, including me, especially anymore believes
till death do us part,
but I can see what I would miss in leaving—
the way her ankles go into the work boots
as she stands on the ice chest;
the problem scrunched into her forehead;
the little kissable mouth
with the nail in it.

by Tony Hoagland

and everything got still.

2010-03-10T17:59:00.000-05:00

Two tremendous poems by tony hoagland. read more here

Spring Lemonade

In late April they spread manure on the fields
the same week the lilac hedges bloom,
so the nose gets one of those symphonic challenges
that require you to stand out on the porch and breathe.

The earth goes around a corner, the dresser drawers slide out
and naturally, we change our clothes,
putting the long underwear away,
taking out the short-sleeve shirts,

trying to make the transition
from psychological Moscow
to psychological Hawaii.
When Mary left her husband in December,
she made herself despise him
as a way of pushing off,
like you would push off from the wall of a swimming pool,

but then she gradually believed her own story
of how horrible he was,

and when I talked to her in March,
she was still spitting on his memory:
you would have thought she never had a heart.

There's a wheel turning in the center of the earth
and over it, our feet are always running, running,
trying to keep pace.
Then there's a period of quietude and rue,
when you want to crawl inside yourself,
when you prefer ugliness to hope.

Last night the sunset was so pink and swollen
the sky looked like it had gotten an infection.

We were sitting on the lawn and sipping lemonade.
Inflamed clouds were throbbing in the fevered light.
Shannon murmured, Somebody better call a doctor.
Kath said, Somebody get some aspirin.
But nobody moved.

And the smell of lilacs and manure blew out of the fields
with such complexity and sweetness, we closed our eyes.
It had nothing to do with being good, or smart, or choosing right.
It had to do with being lucky--
something none of us had ever imagined.

Disappointment

I was feeling pretty religious
standing on the bridge in my winter coat
looking down at the gray water:
the sharp little waves dusted with snow,
fish in their tin armor.

That's what I like about disappointment:
the way it slows you down,
when the querulous insistent chatter of desire
goes dead calm

and the minor roadside flowers
pronounce their quiet colors,
and the red dirt of the hillside glows.

She played the flute, he played the fiddle
and the moon came up over the barn.
Then he didn't get the job, —
or her father died before she told him
that one, most important thing—

and everything got still.

It was February or October
It was July
I remember it so clear
You don't have to pursue anything ever again
It's over
You're free
You're unemployed

You just have to stand there
looking out on the water
in your trench coat of solitude
with your scarf of resignation
lifting in the wind.

By Tony Hoagland

hey baby hey

2010-03-07T13:20:00.000-05:00

the sea was rollin' in slate gray
I looked at you and I looked away
I was cryin'
because I was happy

I didn't want you to see
I was afraid of such mystery
and afraid of losing
so afraid of losing

later on on a balcony
we had a good talk and we felt free
I was comin' to you from far away
light was dim but you showed me the way
in your arms all I could say was
hey baby hey baby hey baby hey

my heart was torn I'd made up my mind
I'd keep to myself and just be kind
and need nothing
just need nothing

love my folks my kids my friends
and make it on through to the end
no more suffering
over loving

you get to me like old time religion did
in my heart when I was a kid
you're sweet gospel music to my ears
you know how to ease all my fears
and from my heart to yours all I can say is
hey baby hey baby hey baby hey

and as we go on through the deal I
I know that we won't always feel
real wonderful
life ain't like that

but I want to stay right by your side
check out the view enjoy the ride
together
with all our loved ones

I want to plant a little garden with you now
take care of a piece of the earth somehow
and tend it when we're old and gray and
try to straighten up and say, well,
I'm so glad to see you today
hey baby hey baby hey baby hey

sometimes i forget, i am one of everybody

2010-03-05T18:34:00.000-05:00

Everybody

I stood at a bus corner
one afternoon, waiting
for the #2. An old
guy stood waiting too.
I stared at him. He
caught my stare, grinned,
gap-toothed. Will you
sign my coat? he said.
Held out a pen. He wore
a dirty canvas coat that
had signatures all over
it, hundreds, maybe
thousands.
I’m trying
to get everybody, he
said.
I signed. On a
little space on a pocket.
Sometimes I remember:
I am one of everybody.

by Marie Sheppard Williams

companions and discoverers...we became perhaps more than we are

2010-03-05T10:38:00.000-05:00

6

Dearest, I never knew such loving. There
in that glass tower in the alien city, alone,
we found what somewhere I had always known
exists and must exist, this fervent care,
this lust of tenderness. Two were aware
how in hot seizure, bone pressed to bone
and liquid flesh to flesh, each separate moan
was pleasure, yes, but most in the other's share.
Companions and discoverers, equal and free,
so deep in love we adventured and so far
that we became perhaps more than we are,
and now being home is hardship. Therefore are we
diminished? No. We are of the world again
but still augmented, more than we've ever been.

by Hayden Carruth

Read more of this Carruth's amazing love (and other)poetry here.

to greet joy without a trace of suspicion

2010-03-04T09:04:00.000-05:00

i want to greet joy without a trace of suspicion.

or i want to be able to appreciate the joy i have now without feeling the need to run ahead of it and clear the obstacles, like some kind of joy bodyguard, or a joy curler (yes i just used curling in a metaphor for my attitude towards joy) i want to hastily smooth the surface as it rolls forward... i am desperate to lay down my jacket for joy. for love.

or, if i cant help myself from looking ahead, then i want to at least believe that love lasts. even if it's changing, growing, deepening, darkening, weakening, wounding, scarring, grounding, ever-awakening to reality or in a constant state of complication, i just want to believe to my core that it can endure.

but not endure like a punctured animal drags on, hobbled and in pain, i want the love that made it all begin to endure - even as it takes new shape i am beginning to feel how that familiar strong structure of love can be there, always there, holding everything up like bones.

this may be the biggest challenge of personal life. not just keeping love alive but believing it is possible. thank you stephen dobyns for this tornado of a poem that sucked me in and dropped me off a few counties away.

Waking

Waking, I look at you sleeping beside me.
It is early and the baby in her crib
has begun her conversation with the gods
that direct her, cooing and making small hoots.
Watching you, I see how your face bears the signs
of our time together—for each objective
description, there is the romantic; for each
scientific fact, there's the subjective truth—
this line was caused by days at a microscope,
this from when you thought I no longer loved you.
Last night a friend called to say that he intends
to move out; so simple, he and his wife splitting
like a cell into two separate creatures.
What would happen if we divided ourselves?
As two colors blend on a white pad, so we
have become a third color; or better,
as a wire bites into the tree it surrounds,
so we have grown together. Can you believe
how frightening I find this, to know I have
no life except with you? It's almost enough
to make me destroy it just to protest it.
Always we seemed perched on the brink of chaos.
But today there's just sunlight and the baby's
chatter, her wonder at the way light dances
on the wall. How lucky to be ignorant,
to greet joy without a trace of suspicion,
to take that first step without worrying what
comes trailing after, as night trails after day,
or winter summer, or confusion where all
seemed clear and each moment was its own reward.

by Stephen Dobyns

i am very tired of the sound of typing

2010-03-03T10:44:00.000-05:00

i just want to listen to greg brown's voice and all he has to say that i believe in.

EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING AT ONCE

2010-03-02T16:16:00.000-05:00

that is all
for now

clappyhappy colors by april smith & the great picture show

2010-02-26T15:57:00.001-05:00

time was carrying us in its palm like spare change

2010-02-26T14:39:00.000-05:00

god i wish i could write irreverant casual off the cuff ass pinching poetry like this. i get all obsessive with words and bore myself to death. im going to get drunk by myself one night and just start writing.

(it was so hot...)

It was so hot
you would singe your fingertips
just opening the car door.
But that's nothing compared
to what we did to each other.
The mattress shoved
to the center of your practically
empty sublet.
The cicadas buzzing so loudly
like they were sawing a way
through our thoughts.
It was a defining moment
& that was part of the problem—
The way a thing defined
naturally resists
whatever it means to mean.
& then there would be nothing
left to eat but our words
because we'd blown the week's tips
at the bar.
Surely one of our fantasies
had been of wrecking
the spinning rims on the truck
that belonged to the assholes
next door.
For fun we dragged our Goodwill
couch to the curb
& watched the heat lightning.
Any fool could tell
that time was carrying us
in its palm like spare change.

by Matthew Guenette

feeling extremely weak, extremely vulnerable today, cant find the right words to explain why so grabbing onto poetry to pull me out

2010-02-25T10:21:00.001-05:00

AM

I’ve been told
that people in the army
do more by 7:00 am
than I do
in an entire day

but if I wake
at 6:59 am
and turn to you
to trace the outline of your lips
with mine
I will have done enough
and killed no one
in the process.

by Shane Koyczan

that'll do for now

this brief bouquet for you

2010-02-25T09:41:00.001-05:00

In The Alley

In the alley behind the florist's shop,
a huge white garbage truck was parked and idling.
In a cloud of exhaust, two men in coveralls
and stocking caps, their noses dripping,
were picking through the florist's dumpster
and each had selected a fistful of roses.

As I walked past, they gave me a furtive,
conspiratorial nod, perhaps sensing
that I, too (though in my business suit and tie)
am a devotee of garbage – an aficionado
of the wilted, the shopworn, and the free—
and that I had for days been searching
beneath the heaps of worn-out, faded words
to find this brief bouquet for you.

by Ted Kooser

recedes in the mirror like a disappointment

2010-02-25T09:36:00.000-05:00

Travel Directions

There ought to be a word
for the way you know how to get some place
but don't remember the names of streets
the number of turns and blinking yellow lights
so that if someone asked
you really couldn't say
except you know the road starts out straight
and when it's sunny the branches blink across
the windshield making you want to rub your eyes
then the road turns sharply uphill past a red barn
where a black dog jumps out to race you for a quarter mile
and finally recedes in the mirror like a disappointment
and you remember the road dips downhill
into the shadows of the morning
where you hear Bach's unaccompanied 'cello
and understand what a good fit the 'cello makes
in the hollow of the body
where grief begins and for an indeterminate time
the road winds vaguely past
houses people road signs
while time hums in your ear and you remember
the dream you left behind that morning
which had nothing
to do with where
you are going

by Joan I. Siegel

through whatever storm he’s trapped inside

2010-02-23T09:16:00.000-05:00

Common Magic

Your best friend falls in love
and her brain turns to water.
You can watch her lips move,
making the customary sounds,
but you can see they’re merely
words, flimsy as bubbles rising
from some golden sea where she
swims sleek and exotic as a mermaid.

It’s always like that.
You stop for lunch in a crowded
restaurant and the waitress floats
toward you. You can tell she doesn’t care
whether you have the baked or french-fried
and you wonder if your voice comes out in bubbles too.

It’s not just women either. Or love
for that matter. The old man
across from you on the bus holds
a young child on his knee; he is singing
to her and his voice is a small boy
turning somersaults in the green
country of his blood.
It’s only when the driver calls his stop
that he emerges into this puzzle
of brick and tiny hedges. Only then
you notice his shaking hands, his need
of the child to guide him home.

All over the city
you move in your own seasons
through the seasons of others: old women, faces
clawed by weather you can’t feel
clack dry tongues at passersby
while adolescents seethe
in their glassy atmospheres of anger.

In parks, the children
are alien life-forms, rooted
in the galaxies they’ve grown through
to get here. Their games weave
the interface and their laughter
tickles that part of your brain where smells
are hidden and the nuzzling textures of things.

It’s a wonder that anything gets done
at all: a mechanic flails
at the muffler of your car
through whatever storm he’s trapped inside
and the mailman stares at numbers
from the haze of a distant summer.

Yet somehow letters arrive and buses
remember their routes. Banks balance.
Mangoes ripen on the supermarket shelves.
Everyone manages. You gulp the thin air
of this planet as if it were the only
one you knew. Even the earth you’re
standing on seems solid enough.
It’s always the chance word, unthinking
gesture that unlocks the face before you.
Reveals the intricate countries
deep within the eyes. The hidden
lives, like sudden miracles,
that breathe there.

by Bronwen Wallace

dad's birthday toast

2010-02-22T02:00:00.000-05:00

breakfast with my father on a winter saturday

eggs toast bacon no potatoes in an upper east cafe

we drink our coffee slowly, discuss his art collection

and the painting that was victim to my childish misconception

he listens as i tell him and he laughs til almost weeping

to me the Baselitz was of the woman who did our housekeeping

later we are speaking in soft tones of 'if' and 'when'

and casually he adds those words 'if something were to happen'

but i only half-listen, look how handsome he's become!

how words are parentheticals in laugh lines they emerge from

how pepper that seasoned his hair shook out to salty white

my father comes in focus in the clarity of morning light

that he has lived so well, still reaps so much from what he's planted

how thankful I am he can laugh at all this child took for granted.

its my father's 65th birthday today

2010-02-21T13:31:00.000-05:00

Descriptions of Heaven and Hell

The wave breaks
And I'm carried into it.
This is hell, I know,
Yet my father laughs,
Chest-deep, proving I'm wrong.
We're safely rooted,
Rocked on his toes.

Nothing irked him more
Than asking, "What is there
Beyond death?"
His theory once was
That love greets you,
And the loveless
Don't know what to say.

by Mark Jarman

hold me. but hold the mustard.

2010-02-19T12:43:00.000-05:00

this is becoming a poem. just noting it publicly to shame myself into actually developing it.

the substance that holds our little atoms together into bodies

2010-02-19T12:35:00.000-05:00

perfection, this poem. love is so universal its really astounding we dont all give in and subscribe to it as a religion.

Three of Cups

At some point it becomes true that all stories
are love stories. all making, love making.
I didn't make this rule. but it binds me
all the same. I wish there were a law
against condescending against love. against
the economy of fear that says your joy
means less joy for me as if love
were pie, or money, or fossil fuel
dug or pumped from the earth, gone
when it's gone. it's just not true. the heart
with its gift for magnificent expansion
is not coal. not fruit set to spoil or the dollar
cringing in its wallet. when you say darling,
the world lights up at its edges. when mouths
find mouths and minds follow or minds find
minds and mouths, hands, hips, toes, follow –
how about you call that sacred. how about you raise
your veined right hand and swear on the blood
that branches there, yes. I take this crush
to be my lawful infatuation. I will bend toward joy
until the bending's its own pleasure. I will memorize
photographs and street maps, I will acquiesce
to the maudlin urgency of pop songs and dance,
and dance – there's a perfection only the impossible kiss
possesses. there are notes you can only hear naked
in the dark of a room to which you will never
return. anything that moves the world toward light
is a blessing. why not take it with both hands,
lift it to your lips like a broth of stars. this
is the substance that holds our little atoms together
into bodies. this sweet paste of longing
is all that binds us to the earth.
and all we know of the gods.

by Marty McConnell

When the tower falls, be like that child.

2010-02-19T12:33:00.000-05:00

Do you have any advice for those of us just starting out?

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

It’s all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author’s name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, “Shhhh.”

Then start again.

By Ron Koertge

When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand

2010-02-18T14:17:00.000-05:00

sometimes i forget that the grandfathers of poetry were human too, and as such, make a lot of damn sense sometimes. this poem captures what ive been feeling, something that basically boils down to the fact that everything is up in the air except how i feel about the people i love.

we drive through the dark and dont know where we're going, dont know what will happen when we get there but you reach for my hand and i am silent, satisfied.
i require nothing further.

Of The Terrible Doubt Of Appearances

Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,
May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters,
The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known,
(How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and mock me!
How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them,)
May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem) as from my present point of view, and might prove (as of course they would) nought of what they appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely changed points of view;
To me these and the like of these are curiously answer'd by my lovers, my dear friends,
When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand,
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave,
But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied,
He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.

by Walt Whitman

2010-02-18T00:01:00.000-05:00

you held the parked car's wheel with two hands
the way one does at night in a relentless rain
and in the silence after it was said
we looked through the glass at what we faced
a dog walked through the square moon of a street light
tipsy with lameness, left legs weaving over right
tail wagging though that could have been
a consequence of pain
in any case we paid a quiet respect then
to the way the animal can find its balance
how it manages to move forward
even against the tide of its own body

whatever words we used that night
here is what i meant to say
and what i think i heard:
walk with me
weak side to weak side
so that when i stagger
at least it will bring me closer to you.

***

and a song off the sweet (unofficial) soundtrack of the weekend:

big day

2010-02-12T15:57:00.000-05:00

today i transfered the final amount of money from my checking to savings account to finally reach the goal i set before which i would not travel. or rather, after which, i WOULD travel. which means, i am, by my own definition, financially ready to take flight.

ah gods why do you mock me with your well timed poetic moments

2010-02-12T09:16:00.000-05:00

as a follow up to my outburst against/around the idea of "journeying" and as if to give me a cross between a pat on the head, a kick in the ass and a huge long finger, the gods planted this poem in my path this morning. and its beautiful. and perfect. and im printing it and keeping it with me. even if i dont have a journey at least i have mary oliver.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

by mary oliver

alonewithcats

2010-02-12T08:45:00.000-05:00

my friend jessica has finally started the blog in part because ive been badgering her to unleash her raza' sharp wit on the world, its ridiculous that im the only one peeing my pants from our gchat conversations on a daily basis. so i HIGHLY ENCOURAGE YOU ALL to follow it religiously.
if youre the kind of person who is turned off my sarcasm, tries to keep a positive attitude at all times, or is fond of saying things like "turn that frown upside down" then 1. get off my blog and 2. dont waste your time with jessicas. but for the rest of us, this is a bitter pill washed down with a healthy glass of deprication and it does a body good.
alonewithcats.wordpress.com

and were back

2010-02-12T08:07:00.000-05:00

Apologize for that outburst. Then again, I felt it, all of it, and I wouldn't want to 'invalidate' my emotions, and yes those were condescending quote marks, I'm somewhat wary of that word and people who use it.
But of course as soon as I let myself descend into complete self pity and irrational aggression at helpless hairdressers, things started to shift. I'm sure it has something to do with letting it all go, all the pretense and false cheerfulness,emptying the soul of bullshit and actually making room for change.nothing too concrete but at two in the morning after googling til I was blue in the face I came across an awesome school of gastronomy, sustainable eating, food communications etc. Its run by the slow food foundation in part, built off their principles etc. I'm not sure its perfectly right for me and its definitely expensive and I am already questioning why I need to spend so much money when I'm not even sure how ill use the degree but this is how I scratch everything off my list. And maybe I just need to go down the food path for a bit and trust it, even if it doesn't immediately encompass all the other things I'd imagine myself doing. Maybe I have to do it for myself, if nothing else to work on my relationship to food or if nothing else to get a job working for fair trade, or for a chocolate maker, because I can, or of nothing ELSE,to be that much meaner in the kitchen. I don't know.
Also out of the blue I found a bakery in geneva's website and emailed the owner about cooking schools in the area and when I woke up I had a sweet sweet note from her which always tickles me, that people will help a total stranger. And then a lauryn hill song I love came on as I was getting dressed. And there was a shaft of sunlight in my room and kitty was rolling in it in that way cats do and you can't help smile when cats luxuriate in sun.
And I have to say, I washed and recut my hair...
And its not the end of the world.

warning: this is me at my worst. now read at your own risk of losing a huge amount of respect for me.

2010-02-11T21:44:00.000-05:00

im out of my mind with irrational frustration right now
and maybe the worst part is that im so fucking aggressively uncomfortably angry, that i cant even effectively write it out. i cant write it off. i keep writing, erasing writing erasingwritingerasingwriteraseraserase
this is a strong enough emotion that even i cant deny its related to something bigger, im not completely detached from reality, but i will say that what threw me over the edge, superficial or not, was a REALLY FUCKING BAD HAIRCUT.
everyone has their thing, snapping gum, being put on hold, losing the keys, your cell wont pick up service when it clearly should be, hitting their head on something, pulling on the seatbelt and having it lock again and again, getting in the shower and finding the water lukewarm or a dribble of pressure, whatever it is, it doesn't warrant crying over it or kicking a wall but you do. you do. you fucking lose it.
well put me in a tepid shower with no cell service and knock my head against something ten times and it wont set me off but when the rare impulse strikes me to actually get a haircut, as in, NOT take a pair of scissors to my own head, actually pay someone to do it for me, i want it to look better than the way it looks when i do it. and this is a strange thing for me to go ape over because most days i drag my ass out of bed and my hair looks like something washed up on the shore after a hurricane but maybe thats why, if i entrust it to a professional, it better make a DIFFERENCE.
i dont want to look like a 13 year old mall rat, i dont want to walk away unable to run my fingers through my hair because you couldnt figure out how to cut it so you gave up half way through and mashed two pounds of wax into it and pretended that counted as a haircut, i dont want to look in the mirror and feel like one of those mushrooms creatures from mario brothers with a full-on bowl cut, and i definitely, definitely DONT WANT YOU TO TELL ME TO GROW IT OUT AND COME BACK IN A MONTH BECAUSE YOU CANT DO ANYTHING WITH IT NOW ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY YOURE A HAIRDRESSER DRESS MY GODDAMN HAIR OR TRY SELLING PEANUTS ON THE CORNER IF YOU CANT HACK IT AS A STYLIST.

i feel like im wasting my life. i dont know what im good at. im mediocre at most things, decent at a few things, great at nothing except maybe loving people but google tells me theres no career in that. the only thing i seem to be any good at is fucking with words. and not always. and not always for the greater good. i dont know what the greater good is. i dont know where to start to seek myself. i dont even know how to get a visa to travel. i am afraid of being lonely when i travel but im equally afraid of filling my time with friends and not gaining anything from the journey itself. i hate the word journey because it sounds desperate but i am desperate and im afraid maybe i hate the word because ive never actually been on one and maybe thats because im too spoiled, too privileged, too scared to take real risks. im afraid of coming home and being no better, no clearer, no more directed than i was when i left. i believe where i'm at has a name and its called self loathing. if i could unzip my skin and step out of it, un hinge my head and take out my brain, i would.

im going to take a shower. and im bringing paint thinner and a paint scraper to try to get this wax off my scalp.

THXTHXTHX blog

2010-02-11T11:52:00.000-05:00

sweet as hell. this girl has a blog where writes thank you notes to everything. poetry, as far as i'm concerned, in its own way. enjoy. and be thankful.

the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream

2010-02-10T11:00:00.000-05:00

Variations on the Word "Sleep"

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

by Margaret Atwood

i think this blog has great feng shui.

2010-02-09T17:12:00.001-05:00

its oddly arranged but i feel very calm every time i arrive at the page.
that is all. just congratulating myself. toot toot.

oh i like so much i cant even think straight.

2010-02-09T10:46:00.000-05:00

Not as Smart as I think I am

I know that the “57” in Heinz 57 refers to the number
of pickles that the company used to sell, and that
graham crackers and corn flakes were originally
created to prevent masturbation, but I can’t tell you
the difference between a seal and sea lion. Or
the difference between an alligator and a crocodile,
though I think it has to do something with the shape
of their snouts. Pumas and leopards are the same cats
with different colored coats, and something called
“the wingless fly” lives in the Antarctica, but I only
know this because I saw it on a PBS kid’s show once,
and also, I had to google the spelling of Antarctica
because my computer dictionary told me I wasn’t
even close. You know, they say that there is a part
of the human chest that if you strike it hard enough
the person’s heart explodes. This sounds like such a lie
that I have to believe it’s the truth. If I were science,
I’d never tell anyone where this place is. If I were science,
I’d have named this place after you.

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

also read "be prepared" on this site. just do it. this, to me, is fantastic verse.

and THEN i looked her up and look at what i found! She's a hero! and was at DARTMOUTH?! GAH. WHERE WAS I AND ALSO CAN I BE HER?

"In 1996, Cristin started attending NYU's Tisch School of the Arts for Dramatic Writing, where she was first introduced to poetry slams by her classmate, Beau Sia.
With the help of Beau, Cristin founded the NYC-Urbana Reading Series in 1998. Dedicated to showcasing the most innovative voices in poetry, NYC-Urbana has captured the National Slam Championship title three times. Cristin, herself, made history becoming the youngest founding slammaster in the nation when she started the series at age 19, and has since taken home two Slammaster Slam Championships. The slam is still held weekly at NYC's famed Bowery Poetry Club.
Since graduating from NYU in 2000, Cristin has worked as the editor for the "Adult" section for online portal About.com (see Cristin's second book of poetry, Hot Teen Slut for more information on that) and was a founding employee of the Bowery Poetry Club. She is currently a rights agent for the Artists Rights Society.
Cristin continues to perform and lecture internationally & nationally, including residencies with or performances at the Sydney Opera House, the Gasworks Art Complex (Melbourne Australia), Joe's Pub (at NYC's Public Theatre), the Culver Academy (Indiana) and universities & colleges, such Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College and Amhearst College, among many others."

In a Time of Economic Downturn, I Gaze Up at The Sky

2010-02-08T09:10:00.000-05:00

the poem by michael blumenthal on the writers almanac today is startling not only because stocks are falling like crazy, not only because the desire to curl up under the covers and narrow the world down to two people resonates with me deeply these days, not only because the title reminds me of advice i received- to look up at the sky- from the same person the poem recalls, not ONLY because of the reference to sun, moon AND COFFEE, but also the fact that this morning on the T i was writing a poem around a very similiar concept.
planned on writing it up and posting it tonight.
might be rethinkin that.
but nice to know, as poetry always shows, that i may not be creatively unique but i am also not alone on this great big marble.

"...All of us—
sun, moon, coffee, clouds— might feel a twinge
of guilt: such indifference to profit and loss!
Yet, all over the world, tiny birds with broken wings
and injuries of all sorts are making their way
back to their nests, even the waterlogged anhinga
is drying its wings in the sun. It's good to know
so much keeps going on, despite everything."

i love all your hunger, all your fullness.

2010-02-05T09:47:00.000-05:00

Table
(Masa da Masaymis Ha)

A man filled with the gladness of living
Put his keys on the table,
Put flowers in a copper bowl there.
He put his eggs and milk on the table.
He put there the light that came in through the window,
Sound of a bicycle, sound of a spinning wheel.
The softness of bread and weather he put there.
On the table the man put
Things that happened in his mind.
What he wanted to do in life,
He put that there.
Those he loved, those he didn't love,
The man put them on the table too.
Three times three make nine:
The man put nine on the table.
He was next to the window next to the sky;
He reached out and placed on the table endlessness.
So many days he had wanted to drink a beer!
He put on the table the pouring of that beer.
He placed there his sleep and his wakefulness;
His hunger and his fullness he put there.

Now that's what I call a table!
It didn't complain at all about the load.
It wobbled once or twice, then stood firm.
The man kept piling things on.

Edip Cansever

the desire to vanish is stronger than the desire to appear

2010-02-04T09:29:00.001-05:00

Perpetual Motion

In a little while I’ll be drifting up an on-ramp,
sipping coffee from a styrofoam container,
checking my gas gauge with one eye
and twisting the dial of the radio
with the fingers of my third hand,
Looking for a station I can steer to Saturn on.

It seems I have the traveling disease
again, an outbreak of that virus
celebrated by the cracked lips
of a thousand blues musicians—song
about a rooster and a traintrack,
a sunrise and a jug of cherry cherry wine.

It's the kind of perceptual confusion
that makes your loved ones into strangers,
that makes a highway look like a woman
with air conditioned arms. With a
bottomless cup of coffee for a mouth
and jewelry shaped like pay phone booths
dripping from her ears.

In a little while the radio will
almost have me convinced
that I am doing something romantic,
something to do with “freedom” and “becoming”
instead of fright and flight into
an anonymity so deep

it has no bottom,
only signs to tell you what direction
you are falling in: CHEYENNE, SEATTLE,
WICHITA, DETROIT—Do you hear me,
do you feel me moving through?
With my foot upon the gas,
between the future and the past,
I am here—
here where the desire to vanish
is stronger than the desire to appear.

by Tony Hoagland

And I fell, again and again, entangled

2010-02-03T11:11:00.001-05:00

first im reading a poem. then im reading a good poem. and then im done reading but im thinking about it an hour later. and reading it again. and i'm remembering the line about the lonely western hero acting out his part down a lightless street as if it were a memory of my own. and then suddenly, it is my memory. and ive experienced this poem in the present and the past. and its wonderful. just fucking wonderful what words can do.

Like Riding a Bicycle
I would like to write a poem
About how my father taught me
To ride a bicycle one soft twilight,
A poem in which he was tired
And I was scared, unable to disbelieve
In gravity and believe in him,
As the fireflies were coming out
And only enough light remained
For one more run, his big hand at the small
Of my back, pulling away like the gantry
At a missile launch, and this time, this time
I wobbled into flight, caught a balance
I would never lose, and pulled away
From him as he eased, laughing, to a stop,
A poem in which I said that even today
As I make some perilous adult launch,
Like pulling away from my wife
Into the fragile new balance of our life
Apart, I can still feel that steadying hand,
Still hear that strong voice telling me
To embrace the sweet fall forward
Into the future's blue
Equilibrium. But,

Of course, he was drunk that night,
Still wearing his white shirt
And tie from the office, the air around us
Sick with scotch, and the challenge
Was keeping his own balance
As he coaxed his bulk into a trot
Beside me in the hot night, sweat
Soaking his armpits, the eternal flame
Of his cigarette flaring as he gasped
And I fell, again and again, entangled
In my gleaming Schwinn, until
He swore and stomped off
Into the house to continue
Working with my mother
On their own divorce, their balance
Long gone and the hard ground already
Rising up to smite them
While I stayed outside in the dark,
Still falling, until at last I wobbled
Into the frail, upright delight
Of feeling sorry for myself, riding
Alone down the neighborhood's
Black street like the lonely western hero
I still catch myself in the act
Of performing.

And yet, having said all this,
I must also say that this summer evening
Is very beautiful, and I am older
Than my father ever was
As I coast the Pacific shoreline
On my old bike, the gears clicking
Like years, the wind
Touching me for the first time, it seems,
In a very long time,
With soft urgency all over.

by George Bilgere

slow show

2010-02-03T00:55:00.000-05:00

I wanna hurry home to you
put on a slow, dumb show for you
and crack you up
so you can put a blue ribbon on my brain
god I’m very, very frightened
I’ll overdo it

so unapologetic. so, so beautiful.

2010-02-02T14:06:00.001-05:00

What the Living Do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living room windows because the heat's on too high in here, and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss -- we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:

I am living, I remember you.

by Marie Howe

What happened to all the problems that disappear when you refuse to name them?

2010-02-02T09:35:00.001-05:00

Maimonides on What Is Meant by "Vision"

Nothing ever comes true. Not the future of the American kitchenette,
nor the future of the American child. The fashion choices of space colonies
are way off. The future of retirement, say, or the future of want, is want.
The future of language is shorthand, because there are only three models
of vision. The commercial, which delineates the species of the present.
The infomercial, which dates back to pagan times. The seance,
a parlor trick that asks the souls of the dead to perform parlor tricks.
At the spiritual minimum, the people who want to kill us are also
the people we want to kill. What happened to all the problems
that disappear when you refuse to name them? They burned away like money.
No longer a dime to spare on a new appliance, unless it will work forever.
No such thing, no such thing as a self-cleaning oven.

by Benjamin Paloff

more by Paloff here

to move openly together, in the pull of gravity, which is not simple

2010-02-01T15:39:00.000-05:00

I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you've been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I've been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You've kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone...
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carried the feathered grass a long way down
the upbreathing air.

by Adrienne Rich

slam poetry meets love poetry meets me and....this met me like a ton of feathers.

2010-02-01T15:19:00.000-05:00

selected excerpts from Shane Koyczan's Apology:

I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I keep saying that I'm sorry.
I know it's strange, strange in a "George W. Bush hasn't been assassinated yet" kind of way,...
And my heart is a protest that I let rally against my ribs because I want to build my bones into cribs
and lay my reluctance to rest; test what it would be like to live frenetically,
to hold you unapologetically, to plant a giving tree on my front lawn so that when you're gone
it can give you back to me. And I'm sorry that when you sleep next to me you're forced
to listen to the symphony of the unplugged nostril and I'm sorry that for one time for some reason
I called you ma'am, that's fucked up. Fucked up in an
"I just bought a pair of Speedos so I could go swimming with you"
kind of way. And crazier than that is the fact that I will play at being brave
because doubt is about as useful as a fire escape when you are trying to dodge a tidal wave.
When you've got no time to save anyone but yourself you better believe
you're worth it and you are worth the time it takes to take the time to get to know you.
We've managed to muddle through the awkward stages of "I like you" and "do you like me"
and when we both said yes life became a multiple choice test; not knowing anything,
we became each others best guess. And holding your hand is less like exploration and more like discovery.
I don't have to study you to be sure you were the choice I made before
I knew what the other choices were.

Read more here

hey HR

2010-01-29T10:12:00.000-05:00

FYI
I C U 2
lets hope reading poetry for 14 months has helped counter the soul-degenerating affect of spying on employees.

problems not to be solved but lived through

2010-01-29T09:20:00.001-05:00

First Marriage

I made it cross country
In a little under three days.
The engine blew out

About a hundred miles north
Of San Francisco, where I'd
Hoped to start living again

With a woman I'd abandoned
Only a few months before.
The reasons I'd left her were

Wincingly obvious
Soon as I got back
To her, and it didn't take long

Before I again left her.
In a few weeks I'd meet
The woman who became

My first wife, the one
With whom I spent
Almost the entirety

Of my twenties. It took
About twenty years
Getting over her, after

We divorced at thirty.
Broke then, I took
A bus cross-country

And was back in the East
By Christmas, thinking it
Would take three years maybe

To put this one behind me.
But getting over her
Happened as we were

Both in our third marriages,
Both then with children,
Heading for our fifties.

She came cross-country
To tend to me when I had
Cancer, with a 20% chance

Of recovery. The recovery
From all she had been to me,
Me abiding with her as long

As I did, took place finally
When we, her sitting on my bed
And me lying in it, held hands

And watched ourselves watching
TV, something we'd never quite
Been able to do comfortably

All those years ago. So many
Things turn this way over time,
So much tenderness and memory,

Problems not to be solved
But lived, and I resolved
Right then to start living

Only in this kind of time.
Cancer gave this to me: being
Able to sit, comfortably, to get

Over her finally, and to
Get on with the fight to live while
Staying ready to die daily.

by Liam Rector

home is when im alone with you

2010-01-29T00:13:00.000-05:00

a lot of talk and thoughts about the concept of home lately. and on my walk "home" tonight through the wind three songs came on in a row that had to do with home. levi weaver's you are home and melissa etheridge's breathe, for starters, neither of which stupid grooveshark, but also the top song below by edward sharpe that ive had on repeat for the last week or so. anyway here are a few songs i love that deal with this concept we all spend life times defining.

2010-01-28T12:02:00.000-05:00

all I can give you
is february’s fruit
it will not be as sweet
as the flushed skin betrays
do not expect what you have held
on the tongue of your memory
since a summer when
all that could not be swallowed
ran down your face
to meet beneath your chin
but there is something to be savored
in this first imperfect effort--
promise
that a bitter winter
was not for nothing.

best use of squidgy.

2010-01-28T10:42:00.000-05:00

Egg Watchers: the egg timer that entertains you

apertura

2010-01-27T23:14:00.000-05:00

sitting here trying to work through everything when a song comes on. and suddenly i feel like im expressing myself just by listening. each string put in motion sounds like the word i have been waiting to find.
each swell of energy is my unguarded self, the knowledge that i'm loved, the desire to be happy. each time the sound retreats there is always that persistent dark rhythm, a pawing at the ground. in the clarity of absence, it is so obvious that something is missing. in the simplicity of a single beat, there is the impatient knowledge that something has to change.

are you a puma/is it bacon?

2010-01-27T10:48:00.000-05:00

no comment on the did your cat eat it/is your cat healthy line of thinking.
see the source of this brilliance here.

Each day, we must learn again how to love, between morning's quick coffee and evening's slow return

2010-01-27T09:09:00.000-05:00

In The Middle

of a life that's as complicated as everyone else's,
struggling for balance, juggling time.
The mantle clock that was my grandfather's
has stopped at 9:20; we haven't had time
to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,
the chimes don't ring. One day I look out the window,
green summer, the next, the leaves have already fallen,
and a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,
our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning's quick coffee
and evening's slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,
mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies
twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;
his tail, a metronome, 3/4 time. We'll never get there,
Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging
us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up
in love, running out of time.

-Barbara Crooker

seriously, garrison, seriously? enough already. gettin creepy.

2010-01-25T13:49:00.000-05:00

at this rate im just going to shut down this blog and put a big link to the writers almanac. 'wondering how im doing or whats on my mind? see poem of the day' (or yesterdays, such as the case may be).

also, really like that it was merwin. havent connected to one of his pieces in a while.

also, im going to resume putting some of my own shit up here. ive been hoarding it because everyone elses poetry is so, so much better. but ill man up soon.

One of the Butterflies

The trouble with pleasure is the timing
it can overtake me without warning
and be gone before I know it is here
it can stand facing me unrecognized
while I am remembering somewhere else
in another age or someone not seen
for years and never to be seen again
in this world and it seems that I cherish
only now a joy I was not aware of
when it was here although it remains
out of reach and will not be caught or named
or called back and if I could make it stay
as I want to it would turn to pain.

by W. S. Merwin

some people read their horoscopes, i read the writers almanac. todays:

2010-01-23T18:08:00.000-05:00

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

by Robert Frost

One of those poems i think i know because the first two lines are beaten over everyones heads. but i could know it better. a whole lot better.

in the midst of a wreck of a day

2010-01-20T14:43:00.000-05:00

i realize something through a poem i trip over:
true patience is trust.
and true trust is love.
and i know true love. i just need to let it do its work on me.

The Patience of Ordinary Things

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

by Pat Schneider

fireinthebrain

2010-01-20T09:18:00.000-05:00

geneva (aka henrriika, but with all those double letters its easier to just dub her as G-town) wrote back to me and painted a picture of what my time with her would be like and its a very pretty picture, oh its really very pretty, and it would be so nice if that picture would just... fade into life, the way it does in the movies where the little blobs of paint in the old brown bound book become people and paperboys yelling and horses clattering by and then the orchestra strikes up and off you skip into the scenery im getting carried away but the point is before i do any skipping (or tripping) i have what feels like a laundry list of responsibilities to handle and questions to answer and i just need a moment to myself to understand my priorities. i hope that will happen at grandmothers late friday night when everything slows down.

I am trying to trust, just trust. i have become many things over this year, changed some things while others have remained unchanged. but trusting is not something i have become.

Insomniac

I open my eyes to see how the night
is progressing. The clock glows green,
the light of the last-quarter moon
shines up off the snow into our bedroom.
Her portion of our oceanic duvet
lies completely flat. The words
of the shepherd in Tristan, "Waste
and empty, the sea," come back to me.
Where can she be? Then in the furrow
where the duvet overlaps her pillow,
a small hank of brown hair
shows itself, her marker that she's here,
asleep, somewhere down in the dark
underneath. Now she rotates
herself a quarter turn, from strewn
all unfolded on her back to bunched
in a Z on her side, with her back to me.
I squirm nearer, careful not to break
into the immensity of her sleep,
and lie there absorbing the astounding
quantity of heat a slender body
ovens up around itself.
Her slow, purring, sometimes snorish,
perfectly intelligible sleeping sounds
abruptly stop. A leg darts back
and hooks my ankle with its foot
and draws me closer. Immediately
her sleeping sounds resume, telling me:
"Come, press against me, yes, like that,
put your right elbow on my hipbone, perfect,
and your right hand at my breasts, yes, that's it,
now your left arm, which has become extra,
stow it somewhere out of the way, good.
Entangled with each other so, unsleeping one,
together we will outsleep the night."

by Galway Kinnell

great things have happened

2010-01-18T01:36:00.000-05:00

We were talking about the great things
that have happened in our lifetimes;
and I said, "Oh, I suppose the moon landing
was the greatest thing that has happened
in my time." But, of course, we were all lying.
The truth is the moon landing didn't mean
one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963
when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been
the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince
(our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I'm sure),
on a street where by now nobody lived
who could afford to live anywhere else.
That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me,
woke up at half-past four in the morning
and ate cinnamon toast together.

"Is that all?" I hear somebody ask.

Oh, but we were silly with sleepiness
and, under our windows, the street-cleaners
were working their machines and conversing in Italian, and
everything was strange without being threatening,
even the tea-kettle whistled differently
than in the daytime: it was like the feeling
you get sometimes in a country you've never visited
before, when the bread doesn't taste quite the same,
the butter is a small adventure, and they put
paprika on the table instead of pepper,
except that there was nobody in this country
except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love.

by alden nowlan

remind me

2010-01-13T10:22:00.000-05:00

to discuss what happened last night in one of the strangest settings ive ever observed humans. the confusion frustration manipulation i felt occuring around me and to me. the vulnerability i observed. and the aggression i felt towards the people who preyed on it. and the play i think i want to write about it.

early hours of sky

2010-01-11T14:18:00.000-05:00

i like this blog i just tripped and fell into by poet teresa ballard. she is crazy well read and makes lovely recommendations. but it seems to have come to a standstill last april, and this is sad.

at any rate she did a post where she took ten lines from poems or songs that she could remember off the top of her head. they are all poets i love if not poems i know and love but i could never have recalled these lines. im very impressed if they really do come to her from thin air, unfortunately all that pops into my brain are cliche lines from ancient cobwebby poems i was forced to recite in middleschool.
repetitious conservative early education: 1
self taught post-grad poetry explorations: 0

i have often thought i should memorize a poem each week, as an exercize, as a way to keep my brain lyrical... as an attempt to one day be that awesome older person who can quote poems... maybe that just my idea of awesome. im going to do it though. yeah. im going to DO IT. maybe ill start with a pavlova one i just posted. yeah. YEAH!

anyway i thought id post this here because i want to do one myself later and i want to make sure i know where each of these lines comes from. when i have a chance. i need to get back to work. the work im paid to do.

god DAMNIT i hate mondays.

1. lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. – Anne Sexton

2. I could see as I laid the last peach in the water--full of fish and eyes--Brigit Pegeen Kelly

3. One day it happens: what you have feared all your life— Marie Howe

4. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary-- Margaret Atwood

5. I was much too far out all my life and not waving but drowning. Stevie Smith

6. And the three men I admire most, the father, son and the holy ghost – Don McLean

7. I am in love with a certain kind of cloud – Olena Kalytiak Davis

8. Smart lad, to slip away from fields where glory does not stay--A. E. Housman

9. All my gods are profane, speak without purpose or memory--Ballard

10. We whispered yes, there on the intricate balconies of breath, overlooking the rest of our lives—Carolyn Forche

vera pavlova. to me. to you.

2010-01-11T14:11:00.000-05:00

Multiplying in a column M by F
do we get one or two as a result?
May the body stay glued to the soul,
may the soul fear the body.
Do I ask too much? I only wish
the crucible of tenderness would melt
memories, and I would sleep, my cheek
pressed against your back, as on a motorbike

one of many incredible simple clean picked bone deep love poems by vera pavlova
read more of her beautiful work here

have i talked about ellen bass?

2010-01-06T10:25:00.001-05:00

i think i have. i think i once posted her poem, Gate C22, about the smooch exchanged between less than perfect people that everyone in the terminal watched wistfully, wishing for once they were the overweight under styled woman being so tenderly kissed.

i should have noticed then that the poet had a special eye but somehow -blame it on this "job" that keeps making me "work" while in the "office"- i didnt investigate her further. well now i have taken a second, third, fourth, unquenchably thirsty swig of her light clean crispy and deeply satisfying work. i suggest you do to, she is a new favorite.

here is one that might be the closest a poem has ever come to encapsulating the maternal instinct, rivalling one by sharon olds that i can think of...

After Our Daughter's Wedding

While the remnants of cake
and half-empty champagne glasses
lay on the lawn like sunbathers lingering
in the slanting light, we left the house guests
and drove to Antonelli's pond.
On a log by the bank I sat in my flowered dress and cried.
A lone fisherman drifted by, casting his ribbon of light.
"Do you feel like you've given her away?" you asked.
But no, it was that she made it
to here, that she didn't
drown in a well or die
of pneumonia or take the pills.
She wasn't crushed
under the mammoth wheels of a semi
on highway 17, wasn't found
lying in the alley
that night after rehearsal
when I got the time wrong.
It's animal. The egg
not eaten by a weasel. Turtles
crossing the beach, exposed
in the moonlight. And we
have so few to start with.
And that long gestation—
like carrying your soul out in front of you.
All those years of feeding
and watching. The vulnerable hollow
at the back of the neck. Never knowing
what could pick them off—a seagull
swooping down for a clam.
Our most basic imperative:
for them to survive.
And there's never been a moment
we could count on it.

-Ellen Bass

Read more here. please.

day maker

2010-01-05T16:50:00.000-05:00

i do believe it's glowing.
this sweet gift lightened my little life in a big way.

update: the arrangement is called sun and moon.
which is perfect and imperfect and sweet but sad and just made me smile.
also the orchid's name derives from the Greek word "orchis," meaning "testicle."
but thats not really relevant.

something whose meaning we feel sure we know, and still can't quite translate.

2010-01-04T16:12:00.000-05:00

Imagining It

At eighteen, in Paris,
I just woke up out of a dream
just before dawn, and stepped through the long window
from my cold room with its red silk walls.
Shivering a little in my dressing gown,
I leaned on the balustrade
and, look, overnight a light snow had fallen;
no car had driven over it yet, it lay in the street
as white, as innocent, as snow on the open fields.
Then something approached with a calm rhythm
of hoof-beats made softer by the snow, the sound
of a quiet heart. It was a heaped-up wood cart
pulled by a gray horse who walked along slowly,
head down, while the driver
sat at the back of one shaft and hunched over
to light his cigarette.
From above, I saw clearly
the lit match in the old man's cupped hands, its glow
on his long jaw, the small well of flame
between his living palms like the flare
of the soul in his body. He went on
down the street, and the sky went on
growing lighter, and I saw how he left
his dark tracks behind him on the whiteness
of the snow, just the lines of the two wheels,
slightly wavering, and the dints of the horse's hooves
between them, a writing in an undiscovered
language, something whose meaning
we feel sure we know, and still can't quite
translate.
When I stepped inside again,
I stopped thinking about love for a minute — I thought about it
almost all the time then — and thought instead
about being alive for a while in a world
with cobblestones, new snow, and the unconscious
poem printed by hooves on the maiden street.

Of course I was not yet ready to be grateful.

by k. barnes read more here

you. yes you.

2010-01-04T10:03:00.000-05:00

read this here

when all else fails, poetry:

2010-01-04T10:02:00.000-05:00

Days of '74

What was the future then but affirmation,
The first yes between us
Followed by the first lingering dawn?
Waking below a window shaded by redwoods
(Waking? We hadn’t slept—),
We found time saved, like sunlight in a tree.

Still, the house was cold, and there were shadows.
The couple in the next room
Rapped the wall to quiet us, like them,
Condescending from a bitter knowledge
That, young as we all were,
Love didn’t last, but receded into silence.

Wedging our pillows back of the headboard
That clapped in time with us,
We let them think we agreed. Then, holding on,
We closed each other’s mouths and felt that slowness
That the best days begin with
Turn into the speed with which they fly.

Flight was that year’s theme, all around us—
Flight of hunter and hunted,
The President turning inward on one wing,
And, on the patio, the emigration
Of termites, a glittering fleet,
Leaving that shadowed house a little lighter.

Within it all, above it, or beyond,
We thought we were the fixed point,
And held still as the quail lit down beside us
And waited for her plump mate to appear,
His crest a quivering hook.
The valley’s reach of sunshine reeled them in.

There was wilderness around us, don’t forget.
Behind the nets of fragrance
Thrown across our path by the acacia
Lurked the green man or the kidnapper.
And there was the Pacific
With its own passions taking place as rain.

The sorrow of the couple in the next room
Was a deep muteness nightly.
That loneliness could come of loving was
Like news of time cored out of the redwood.
The house that we made shake,
Or thought we did, was taking wing already.

After we left, still it took us years
Before we stopped comparing
Every morning together to that first one
And every place we lived to that first place
And everything we said
To that first word repeated all night long.

by Mark Jarman

waste of space broken record

2009-12-29T17:04:00.001-05:00

absolute waste of space at work today, (hi HR, if you can read this) but have been very successful in the pursuit of poetry and music. loving broken records:

listen to more by them here

Translation of My Life

2009-12-28T11:36:00.000-05:00

I remember the past.
Before there were poems.
I was eight. The world
simple as a primer.
I lived in a small town
far from the ocean.
Home, then school,
then home again,
back and forth
on my blue bicycle.
In the summer, a blue pool,
white clouds sailing over,
and a song playing
on the jukebox.
Always the same song.
Then fall, with its burning
leaves. Thanksgiving.
Christmas. Over and over.
There are photographs,
yellow and crumbling,
to prove what I say.

Imagine: a town
in the same universe as this one,
with the same physical laws,
but no poets, no poetry.
No scribbling hands up late
at night writing words
they believed would save them.
No noisy fluttering pages
to disturb the peace
of the dreaming populace.
Understand, I was only a girl
living the days as they came.
I did not know then I would leave.
Though I had a secret
I did not tell and will not ever,
I did not know I would leave.

-by Elizabeth Spires

read more Elizabeth Spires here
got particularly spooked by "the snowy day"

came on my ipod today as i ran and then set it on repeat and listened 11 times in a row

2009-12-21T16:27:00.000-05:00

I don't want another lover
So don't keep holding out your hands
There's no room beside me
I'm not looking for romance
Say I'll be here, I'll be here
But there's no way you'd understand

All I want
All I want
All I want
When I don't even know myself

I don't want another partner
So don't try and break the spell
I can't even understand me
So don't think that you can help
When I say things and see things
That's no way on earth to tell

What I want
What I want
What I want
'Cos I don't even know myself

No-one wants to be lonely
But what am I to do?
I'm just trying to be honest
I don't want to hurt you too
When I'll be there, I'll be there
I know I sound confused

But all I want
All I want
All I want
All I want
All I want
See, all I want
All I want
Is to one day come to know myself

heyyyy guess where i am? at home. online.

2009-12-19T13:15:00.000-05:00

yep. thats right. after 8 hours in the wellington public library battling the floridian equivalent of the biblical plaques (crotchety deaf grannies, shushing and bustling librarians, suspicious right wingers, hefty candy chucking children, sulky cell phone talking teenagers, an infestation of massive grasshoppers, no food and worse, no COFFEE) i just found what i had been looking for frantically yesterday morning: wireless.
*shakes fist*
but it did make for good bonding on the phone with coworkers who heard when a tootsie pop whizzed by narrowly missing my head and then heard me turn around and lay mental waste to a particularly tubby and obnoxious bully. ill have to log on and do some work next week to make up for lost time but its fine, im in southern florida afterall, i cant believe im saying this but i might even enjoy escaping into some work. wow. new low.
for now im running, riding, cooking and working on responding to important emails that have been burning a hole in my inbox. and doing more research on The Next Step, hoping my contact contacts me.

here's what ill be making tonight or tomorrow with good floridian tomatoes for a little party moms having for her friend thats leaving town permanently for mexico (smart woman). its good for potlucks and the like:

roasted tomato and goats’ cheese tart with thyme

1 lb ripe plum tomatoes
soft goat cheese
chopped fresh thyme, plus a few small sprigs
1 x 375 g pack fresh, ready-rolled puff pastry
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
extra virgin olive oil
salt and black pepper
Pre-heat the oven to 375

put the pastry on a baking tray and score a line on it about ½ in in from the edge, all the way around, but dont cut it all the way through. put goat cheese crushed garlic, chopped thyme salt and pepper in a bowl, mix, spread the cheese mixture on the pastry up to the line. thin slice the tomatoes and arrange on top in overlapping lines, season the tomatos, drizzle olive oil on top, put thyme over the whole thing and bake in the middle of the over for 55 mins or until pastry is browning and the tomatoes are roasted well.

bite me grandma. oh im sorry can you not quite read this from where youre sitting? HOW ABOUT NOW? BITE ME GRANDMA NOW GET ON BACK TO FOX NEWS.

2009-12-18T12:22:00.000-05:00

this is beyond ridiculous. im sitting in the wellington public library because my mothers internet wasnt working and i couldnt manage to hack into any of the surrounding wireless signals (know that i tried, at 7:30 this morning, holding my computer up like simba from the lion king as i wandered around the condo, which is a great way to get arrested in this state) and then spent half an hour trying to find my mothers car keys which she wuoldnt help me find because she wont get out of bed which is another issue altogether and now ive finally found the libs where they have disabled or somehow blocked all chat functions so i cant get on AIM to work and worse i cant get on gchat to bitch about this clusterfuck of a day to my peanut gallery and my hair is reacting most unpleasantly to the humidity causing me to look like shirley temple after hitting the crack pipe one too many times and im litterally between two blue haired 90 year old ortho-shoe wearing two finger typing grandmas who are eying me like bin laden himself because ive been forced to work off my personal computer which features a holy trinity of stickers-that-will-get-you-shot-in-florida: Obama 08, Free IRAN and Keep Abortion Legal.
not that i could ever imagine retiring period but mark my word i will retire to apalachia before i retire to this godforsaken state of backwards thinking and plastic santas.

follow up convo with pcox

daisy (12:47:37 PM): the commie library is letting me on AIM for all of two seconds can you send me julies AIM?
pcox (12:47:44 PM): OMG
pcox (12:47:57 PM): and WOW you're ALIIIIIVE
daisy (12:48:47 PM): BARELY
pcox (12:49:00 PM): so i got in at 9
pcox (12:49:06 PM): IM SO REBELLIOUS!!!
daisy (12:49:30 PM): my mothers about to kill me i made her read off from a page of notes i had left at home, of course, because im incapable of doing anythign right, and it was like listenign to a dog try to speak russian.
daisy (12:49:32 PM): YOU REBEL YOU
pcox (12:49:41 PM): HAHAHAHA
pcox (12:49:58 PM): frau freund
daisy(12:50:09 PM): yeah that sweet nicknames been used in the past for her
pcox (12:50:42 PM): i KNEW it
pcox (12:51:54 PM): but really
pcox (12:51:57 PM): why am i here
pcox (12:51:58 PM): today
pcox (12:52:01 PM): and in life
daisy (12:52:34 PM): perrin
daisy (12:52:36 PM): really
daisy(12:52:49 PM): do i LOOK like the person to be directing your existential crisis towards?
daisy (12:52:52 PM): if you could see me you would scan my humidified curly fried no make up wearing grandma scaring personage and you would sadly shake your head
pcox (12:53:42 PM): deep sigh
pcox (12:53:55 PM): can you come to california and entertain me?
pcox (12:53:55 PM): thanks
daisy (12:54:14 PM): i am THISCLOSE
daisy (12:54:51 PM): and now that much closer. why? because a woman just walked by me wearing head to toe pastel blue with white nurse shoes holding a book called JESUS WAS NOT A JEW
daisy (12:54:55 PM): i kid you not
pcox (12:55:20 PM): AHHHHHHHH i just choked on my donut. damn you.