Untitled Novel (Fall 2009)

(Some prose. To hopefully wet your appetite for the rest of this novel which I've only barely started and really need to write more of. You can guess whats in the jars if you want, I'll give you a prize...)

Keeping these things for people is not hard. They don’t often try to escape once you’ve got the lid on tight, though some do not want to be preserved. I have learned to be hyper aware of my body in space. I’ve also memorized the dimensions of this place exactly, meaning I could close my eyes all day and never trip or bump into anything. Being surrounded by breakable things makes this absolutely imperative. If the glass breaks it can cut right through what it once protected, which at the very least gets exposed and thus contaminated by the very room its in. Uncontaminated, they are quite beautiful. They are pretty slippery once you’ve extracted them, somewhat less liquidy than jello but by no means water. They have no real mass, and are remarkably unaffected by gravity. They are easily recognized by their color. Angry ones are red, sorrowful ones a deep blue or purple. Jealousy adds a green tint, while the funny or awkward tend towards yellows and oranges. The truer it is, that is the less tainted by emotions, the closer it seems to the color of water. If it is also joyful, it seems to always be catching the light. What I mean is, it sparkles.

The Return of Sunlight (the demise of down) *TODAY*

(Can't tell you what the first warm day here will do for your life. It's a collective feeling of 'YYYYAAAAAYYYYY!!!!!!'. This combined with a day/night full of great people had me sweating bliss and breathing smiles. This is cheesy, and no you're not shocked that its a love poem for NY, but I had to share...)

It started in the park
with the marble arch.
There was an upright piano
next to the fountain,
where a man in a fedora
and scarf and no jacket
played Beatles songs. He didn't sing.
The sun was like an old friend
that we were all reigniting
a love affair with.
I walked uptown on 5th then 6th,
watching everyone internally frolic.
The only place with remnants of winter
is Central Park, where hole-y patches of snow
still lay over the grass.
They look silly and anachronistic.
Here there is commerce and fashion
and the Plaza, and its all so beautiful
but its the other park that feeds my bliss.
This island is Bohemia in my heart,
and the first spring day I'm in love all over.

The Blessing (James Wright)

(This is Tommy's favorite poem of the moment. He is here and we are celebrating his successful job interview. So this is dedicated to him, enjoy)

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

The Second Coming (William Butler Yeats)

(I like the violence of this. Can't deal w/ my stuff today so enjoy Yeats, pronounced Yates which is always annoying...)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Another Prose Poem (Late Summer 2007)

(Here is another prose poem. Not an oxymoron, more like a pleasant contradiction thats easy to swallow...)

Someone told me once that time freezes when you receive news you've been dreading.
Wrong.
Instead a chisel appears to start breaking your surface, banging away until it finds the sweet spot where the crack spreads and you shatter to the floor. Everything around you promptly shatters to reveal a scene beneath it that is more dull and less in focus that a mere moment ago. The lack of clarity is fear you've been carrying around, finally making its debut, physically manifesting just in time to fuck your day up.

Hopefully you thought ahead enough to get a quick breath in before breaking, otherwise the breaths feel as jagged as the shapes you've become on the floor.

Questioning (Feb 2nd, 2010)

(So this is a 2nd draft. It's coming out of a women's storytelling class, about what love is and how people think about themselves as individuals and as people with history and as participants in loving (or other kinds of) relationships. It's a moment of frustration. I often wonder why the stakes are so high, when we let love...)

I am a cliche,
also a study in contradictions.
Who could love me?

I don't sleep.
I survive on just coffee with soy.
Who could know?

I need to stay moving,
rest and waiting freak me out.
Who wants to keep up?

I'm alive when I'm spontaneous,
depressed when I'm bored.
Who can deal?

I day dream, almost hourly,
about love-fueled revolutions.
Who could stomach it?

I sing out loud
on the subway. And dance.
No one would tolerate it.

I cry in the shower.
I melt in the steam.
No one cares.

I like to cook and hoolihoop
and abbreviate and fuck and read
and walk and take shots
and theorize and pretend to work
and listen and laugh.
So what. No one relates.

I am easy to please
and hard to understand.
Whose willing to navigate complexities
for the sake of a kiss?

Untitled (March-ish 07)

(Sweet loss of self emo poem written at a really shitty time. I started it in my head sitting in my high school parking lot late one night, where I'd gone to smoke and try to find something that, obviously, was long gone. Losing your childhood happens to everyone, but its a really disconcerting moment, and it's different for everyone. It's weird when you know things will never be the same...)

I came back tonight
and no one was here, although
it all looks exactly the same.
I thought when I left I'd taken away
a bundle of people whose
smiles I'd memorized
and laughter I owned.
When I thought of a legacy, I thought of
a small silver ring,
and how we'd always think parallel thoughts.

It seems like I miscalculated, and
somewhere along the way
silence became what I managed to keep.
Tonight it was a heavy silence, burdensome
amidst the starless, humid air.
But I'd be lying to say that it was always so heavy,
and sometimes the quiet
is pleasantly ironic lain over my city streets.

And now the planet has grown so warm
that the air is too thick to see through
and even the stars can't be seen,
at least not how they once were.

At least I learned while I was here.
Of course they left out the important lessons,
like how to say goodbye
and what to wear when you grow up
and to remember not to be surprised
when unchangeable things change.
And how not to lose socks.

My fingertips smell like smoke which
is usually romantic but tonight
is oppressive and out of place
on my kitchen floor,
where I have sat to take a deep breath
and think about what to eat.
I already know I don't want anything.

Except to stay and go at once,
and invent a device
that will render things permanent.