I feel like I
Just grabbed an electric fence.
That is the effect
of your skin on my hands.
Please return the feeling to my fingertips,
numbness is among my greater fears.
I feel like I
Just went ice fishing.
Sat out in the cold
with no gloves on.
Without the warmth
of your heat on my hands.
Please return the feeling to my fingertips,
so that I can hold on.
I feel like I
Just caught my hand
in the door.
Trying to stop it
from shutting behind you.
My hands are useless
without you to touch.
Don't blame me for
not respecting your departure.
But please,
Please return the feeling to my fingertips.
so that I can, at least,
hold a pen, write to you,
or about you.
Or feel you close again.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Goin' to Carolina in my mind... <3
In the car right now, with cousins Nora, Toby, Page and Charlie. On the way down to Topsail Island, NC. My mother’s family goes to the beach together every year, but this year is special because the Boston cousins are joining us as well, and we are celebrating the would-be centennial of my great-grandmother Rahel’s birth. She’s my namesake (obviously) so I feel like this year might be important for me in some way. I’m oddly attached to all things Grandma Rachel. Anyway, in planning this year’s talent show (the 10th Annual Brish Family Talent Show, thank you very much), I have been moved to look through my showtunes. I had no idea that I was about to accidentally trip down memory lane and smack my face on my pre-sixteen days. I say pre-sixteen because I feel that after my sixteenth birthday, life got a little different. No more hanging out with Tori, a long time without David (which was so depressing I can’t even tell you), Brink had long since drifted away (also depressing), I became absorbed into the world of teenage romance (a la Rob), there was horrible drama in other ways (which I won’t even go INTO), and the next year, my parents moved away and I did not. So really, pre-sixteen was very different than post-sixteen. I was wise to have a huge party to mark the occasion of my bittersweet sixteen
That party was hilarious. I remember there was a small army of soda bottles, an enormous cake with a delicious strawberry filling in the middle and giant polka dots on top, Stephanie taught us some fancy dance moves, Pixie Stix led to much debauchery, “Extreme Horse” in the driveway (involving the hoods of both our dilapidated Explorer and Ricky’s car, a giant shovel, and sometimes carrying Doug around to shoot from a supine position). My brother did that hilarious beat-up-and-insult-Rob thing when we were FINALLY starting to flirt. Then my mom had to, in the midst of my birthday party, explain to Mark why it is physically impossible and generally inadvisable to “suck your momma’s balls!” The photos from that party are some of my favorite ever (thank you, Brianna).
At any rate. Thank you Jonathan Larson and Tick, tick…BOOM! for this little stroll. Those were good times. I didn’t realize that I had already moved so far beyond them. It has gotten to the point that I’d forgotten what my dreams were then. I wanted to write plays, direct them, turn them into screenplays and direct those as well. I wanted to write the lyrics to “songs that people will listen to and remember” (j. Larson) full of send-ups to the 90s music that made us materialistic, the movies that turned us into popcorn addicts, the over-acknowledged emotions that made us Generation X, the violence, the beauty, the hunger, the nonsense, the drama, the therapy, the mountains, the kisses in front of refrigerators covered in to-do lists, the nights we were too chicken to skinny dip in the lake, the ex-boyfriends pissing in the yard because the bathroom is all the way upstairs, the unplanned…oh goodness…toddlers now?...the heart-shaped necklaces, the Ron plays, the Kim dances, grabbing two cheeseburgers each at the drive-thru for five bucks, chicken tender melts after shows and before dances, the leopard-print bedrooms, the piracy, the midnight releases, the Dungeons and Dragons, the Star Trek, the books carried around in plastic bags to keep the covers from getting scratched, reading Beowulf without opening it all the way because he takes such good care of his books, my first pierogi at a varsity football game, crying on the floor of my new bedroom because J.J. got the room with the purple carpet and I had to live in Pennsylvania in all the wrong shades, the awkward fights in the lunchroom, gathering napkins to get away from the drama, the medieval dinner parties dressed as theatre, the first crush that ever killed my appetite, fake British accents to get rid of my first stage fright, Ida Rinegold and Munroe Murgatroyd in love, “I have to ask all new students this”…”well, we’re the only two girls here, I guess we’ll have to be friends”…”I remember you! You should come over after school. Today.”…”I was supposed to tell you I found this on the floor, but it’s from Joe”…”Iwaswonderingifyoumightwanttogooutonadatewithmesometime”…moving to the back of the classroom because I thought you were cute, Lobster, but I don’t remember what we said…Anyway. It would be impossible to say how much I remember of the pre-sixteens. I sometimes suspect that, if I had to, I could remember every moment with all of you. Every moment that counted anyway.
But somewhere in remembering all of the moments that made us what we are, I forgot the dreams that kept me who I was. I forgot to create things. My writing has gone so far downhill it’s not funny. I haven’t written drama in months, and what I did write failed even to entertain me. So here’s what I’m hoping. I’m hoping that two weeks away from my sooty apartment right by the train tracks, two weeks with people who knew the version of me that isn’t so bittersweet tasting, two weeks of home and family and reconnection, two weeks of being away from buildings and subway noise and laundry in the scary basement…two weeks will have to be enough to bring me back.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed for me?
That party was hilarious. I remember there was a small army of soda bottles, an enormous cake with a delicious strawberry filling in the middle and giant polka dots on top, Stephanie taught us some fancy dance moves, Pixie Stix led to much debauchery, “Extreme Horse” in the driveway (involving the hoods of both our dilapidated Explorer and Ricky’s car, a giant shovel, and sometimes carrying Doug around to shoot from a supine position). My brother did that hilarious beat-up-and-insult-Rob thing when we were FINALLY starting to flirt. Then my mom had to, in the midst of my birthday party, explain to Mark why it is physically impossible and generally inadvisable to “suck your momma’s balls!” The photos from that party are some of my favorite ever (thank you, Brianna).
At any rate. Thank you Jonathan Larson and Tick, tick…BOOM! for this little stroll. Those were good times. I didn’t realize that I had already moved so far beyond them. It has gotten to the point that I’d forgotten what my dreams were then. I wanted to write plays, direct them, turn them into screenplays and direct those as well. I wanted to write the lyrics to “songs that people will listen to and remember” (j. Larson) full of send-ups to the 90s music that made us materialistic, the movies that turned us into popcorn addicts, the over-acknowledged emotions that made us Generation X, the violence, the beauty, the hunger, the nonsense, the drama, the therapy, the mountains, the kisses in front of refrigerators covered in to-do lists, the nights we were too chicken to skinny dip in the lake, the ex-boyfriends pissing in the yard because the bathroom is all the way upstairs, the unplanned…oh goodness…toddlers now?...the heart-shaped necklaces, the Ron plays, the Kim dances, grabbing two cheeseburgers each at the drive-thru for five bucks, chicken tender melts after shows and before dances, the leopard-print bedrooms, the piracy, the midnight releases, the Dungeons and Dragons, the Star Trek, the books carried around in plastic bags to keep the covers from getting scratched, reading Beowulf without opening it all the way because he takes such good care of his books, my first pierogi at a varsity football game, crying on the floor of my new bedroom because J.J. got the room with the purple carpet and I had to live in Pennsylvania in all the wrong shades, the awkward fights in the lunchroom, gathering napkins to get away from the drama, the medieval dinner parties dressed as theatre, the first crush that ever killed my appetite, fake British accents to get rid of my first stage fright, Ida Rinegold and Munroe Murgatroyd in love, “I have to ask all new students this”…”well, we’re the only two girls here, I guess we’ll have to be friends”…”I remember you! You should come over after school. Today.”…”I was supposed to tell you I found this on the floor, but it’s from Joe”…”Iwaswonderingifyoumightwanttogooutonadatewithmesometime”…moving to the back of the classroom because I thought you were cute, Lobster, but I don’t remember what we said…Anyway. It would be impossible to say how much I remember of the pre-sixteens. I sometimes suspect that, if I had to, I could remember every moment with all of you. Every moment that counted anyway.
But somewhere in remembering all of the moments that made us what we are, I forgot the dreams that kept me who I was. I forgot to create things. My writing has gone so far downhill it’s not funny. I haven’t written drama in months, and what I did write failed even to entertain me. So here’s what I’m hoping. I’m hoping that two weeks away from my sooty apartment right by the train tracks, two weeks with people who knew the version of me that isn’t so bittersweet tasting, two weeks of home and family and reconnection, two weeks of being away from buildings and subway noise and laundry in the scary basement…two weeks will have to be enough to bring me back.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed for me?
Monday, June 29, 2009
Stream of consciousness.
I found you.
Not
the other way
around.
I wonder if you know that.
I wonder if I let you know,
or if I was more comfortable
com-FORT-able. Fortified.
letting you believe that you found me, first.
I want to get to know you.
Four years after finding you, I want to get to know you.
More importantly
I want to let you know me.
Well, it might be too late now.
Too late for us to have a shot
Too late for me to have a childhood
Rather than need anyone else, I threw both away. I sold them to buy self-sufficiency.
Your shot.
My youth.
For a penny each, tossed into the Nantucket sound.
One for a wish, and one to bring you back.
Could a little wish like that bring you back to me?
If you came back, if you actually made the effort and came to see me…
(for the first time in two years)
Then would I let you get to know me? Would I cry at you like I do or would I let you understand really what makes me so sad. Would I tell you that I’m scared of time. Of how it moves forward, and of how it moves me away from home, from the home I wanted to build with you? Of how my path has changed. Of making the wrong choice, the wrong career, the wrong way. Becoming the wrong person. Would I tell you that, no matter how many times you tell me otherwise, I’m still too scared that you love her more, that she’s who you belong with? That I’m selfish for keeping you from her? I’m scared that you, the only man who ever loved me, will wake up one day and realize you didn’t love me after all. What would I be worth to myself then. I wish it weren’t so, but it is. I wouldn’t see myself the same way. Someone loved me once, that’s comfort. That’s validation. So I try and realize I didn’t love you, just in case, so that it won’t hurt as much…but obviously I can’t. In fact, I still love you. I wonder, though, if you understand my doubts. I worry that you are just too scared and lacking in self-esteem and motivation to actually put yourself out there. That I am a safety net for you. You are more than that to me. Fuck, there was a time that all I wanted in life was to have your children and live in the mountains with you. Have dogs and make home movies of our babies crawling on blankets in the lawn, the endless mountains behind them like guardians, shelter. But still you won’t let me any closer than I let you. You are different with our other friends than you are with me. I know this now. They’ve told me you change when I’m around. You behave better. You aren’t as dark. But you know, I sense the darkness. I sense the way you are with everyone else, and, if anything, I crave it. Don’t you know by now that I will love you always. Don’t you think that it is time to relax? I will if you will.
I will if you will.
Not
the other way
around.
I wonder if you know that.
I wonder if I let you know,
or if I was more comfortable
com-FORT-able. Fortified.
letting you believe that you found me, first.
I want to get to know you.
Four years after finding you, I want to get to know you.
More importantly
I want to let you know me.
Well, it might be too late now.
Too late for us to have a shot
Too late for me to have a childhood
Rather than need anyone else, I threw both away. I sold them to buy self-sufficiency.
Your shot.
My youth.
For a penny each, tossed into the Nantucket sound.
One for a wish, and one to bring you back.
Could a little wish like that bring you back to me?
If you came back, if you actually made the effort and came to see me…
(for the first time in two years)
Then would I let you get to know me? Would I cry at you like I do or would I let you understand really what makes me so sad. Would I tell you that I’m scared of time. Of how it moves forward, and of how it moves me away from home, from the home I wanted to build with you? Of how my path has changed. Of making the wrong choice, the wrong career, the wrong way. Becoming the wrong person. Would I tell you that, no matter how many times you tell me otherwise, I’m still too scared that you love her more, that she’s who you belong with? That I’m selfish for keeping you from her? I’m scared that you, the only man who ever loved me, will wake up one day and realize you didn’t love me after all. What would I be worth to myself then. I wish it weren’t so, but it is. I wouldn’t see myself the same way. Someone loved me once, that’s comfort. That’s validation. So I try and realize I didn’t love you, just in case, so that it won’t hurt as much…but obviously I can’t. In fact, I still love you. I wonder, though, if you understand my doubts. I worry that you are just too scared and lacking in self-esteem and motivation to actually put yourself out there. That I am a safety net for you. You are more than that to me. Fuck, there was a time that all I wanted in life was to have your children and live in the mountains with you. Have dogs and make home movies of our babies crawling on blankets in the lawn, the endless mountains behind them like guardians, shelter. But still you won’t let me any closer than I let you. You are different with our other friends than you are with me. I know this now. They’ve told me you change when I’m around. You behave better. You aren’t as dark. But you know, I sense the darkness. I sense the way you are with everyone else, and, if anything, I crave it. Don’t you know by now that I will love you always. Don’t you think that it is time to relax? I will if you will.
I will if you will.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
I really don't know clouds at all...
I love my mother. So very much. I know we are supposed to dread growing up and becoming our mothers, but if I grow up to be my mom, it will be just fine. She thinks she's not handling this crisis very well but it isn't true at all. Melinda Rachel Wagner Esteban is the strongest woman I know. It takes a lot to keep food on the table for three teenaged boys, a fifth grader, her twenty-year-old daughter, and a morbidly obese dog, let alone herself. She does all that, keeps up with the house, and manages to get to the gym every day, while working full-time with senior citizens. If there is a Superwoman award out there, I officially nominate her.
That's all for today. I know I've been bitching about my life a lot lately, but sometimes having my mom in my life is enough to remind me that it isn't so bad after all. I have a loving family, and the five of us (and Allen) will get through this together.
<3
That's all for today. I know I've been bitching about my life a lot lately, but sometimes having my mom in my life is enough to remind me that it isn't so bad after all. I have a loving family, and the five of us (and Allen) will get through this together.
<3
Monday, April 27, 2009
So its been three days now.
Three days since I've seen Boston. I realize now that I am in love with that city. If I step back from missing Pennsylvania for a minute, I see that my life there was made for me with great care and attention, and that it is the realization of all of my youthful dreams.
Perhaps my appreciation of Boston comes from being here. I love my family and I missed them very much, but being here is so hard for me. First of all, the chaos that my home has been thrown into upsets me so much. I didn't realize how much housekeeping I did back in Pennsylvania until I got down here. All of the boys together don't seem to get the housework done that I did. I mean, the house was a wreck, but not like this. I hate it, I can't stand it, but its too much for me to fix on my own. And I don't have a single friend here to help me. How depressing is that. Maybe if I start sleeping at night so that I can work while the boys are at school, and Tony stops having six million friends over every day, while we are in the midst of a horrific family crisis, then I'll be able to manage. Maybe. But I can't live in this house like this. I'm going crazy, and I smell like a labrador.
I don't know how I'm going to survive this summer, really. I think the reason I had such a hard time getting through final exams is that I knew there was nothing remotely pleasant to look forward to once they were done. A broken family, a house full of the shit left behind by my horrible deadbeat dad, a pudgy dying dog, a mother who can't see the mess around her or get things done in the proper order, brothers who are so focused on being pissed at my dad that they don't see how much of a problem they are in the house and how much of a mess they make. Okay, yeah, I'm obsessed with the mess. This is perhaps because I'm going completely stir-crazy. In Boston I go a million places every day. I'm always outside and walking around, even in horrible weather. I go places. I have the freedom to go wherever I want with only my feet. Here, I stay home all day. I could walk for a half an hour and still not manage to leave this housing development. I could walk for a half an hour and all of the houses would still look the same. I could walk for a half an hour and not even notice I had gone anywhere. I'm going nowhere. I fucking hate the suburbs. Its the only environment I'll never be comfortable with. I mean, I love visiting the suburbs for shorter periods of time. I could do a week in the suburbs with no problem. I could do a week in the suburbs better if I had a vehicle.
So I need to get a job if I'm going to manage this. If I'm going to get out of the house. Miss LouAnne across the street, one of mom's best friends, told me that if i get my license, she'll let me learn to ride a motorcycle on Sophie's (her daughter) bike and then let me take that to work once I get my bike license. Kind of awesome but no small feat. I can barely drive a car. Though I feel that a motorcycle would be more my style.
Then we have the irony of that situation. My family has been abandoned by a biker. There is a certain irony to handling the situation with my biker dad while riding around on a motorcycle. I like it. Rob says I should write about it and it would make a helluva story. He's right. I should. So to start, I'm blogging. The stuff about my dad I'll probably keep in a file on my laptop. Don't want to air too much dirty laundry in public, you know?
Speaking of Rob, boy do I miss him. I have of course been missing him since September. Okay thats not entirely true. I've been missing him since the day he went away to college. Much more since the day I did. Missing him is perhaps the one and only constant I've had all these years.
I also miss everyone else. And myself. I feel like I've been missing myself for a while now. maybe with nobody else around I'll be able to find me. That didn't work last summer but perhaps the second time, it'll take. Self-discovery isn't exactly what I was hoping to get out of this summer, but maybe it's better.
I'm going to try and find the good in the monotony. Budget my time. Sleep at night, work out in the morning, get things done during the day, write in the afternoon, and sleep again before two a.m. It could happen. I can do this. I can totally do this.
I worry that my "can-do" attitude is just my method of shutting down my emotions. Because it is. But alas, its all I can do to get out of bed into this horrible version of my life. When I lost touch with my emotions, I don't know, but I'm not certain that I'm going to find them until I get this house in order and my family back on track. Wish me luck, I'm going to need a boatload of it.
"Carrying bags and a navy taxi man said
"Take your time love
'Cause you don't have to rush
'Cause it's your life and it's no one else's, sweetheart
Don't let someone put you in a box."
So I take all that other stuff that I said before
And I'm gonna make it work
'Cause I'm losing my mind and it's driving me up the wall "
-Kate Nash, "Navy Taxi"
Perhaps my appreciation of Boston comes from being here. I love my family and I missed them very much, but being here is so hard for me. First of all, the chaos that my home has been thrown into upsets me so much. I didn't realize how much housekeeping I did back in Pennsylvania until I got down here. All of the boys together don't seem to get the housework done that I did. I mean, the house was a wreck, but not like this. I hate it, I can't stand it, but its too much for me to fix on my own. And I don't have a single friend here to help me. How depressing is that. Maybe if I start sleeping at night so that I can work while the boys are at school, and Tony stops having six million friends over every day, while we are in the midst of a horrific family crisis, then I'll be able to manage. Maybe. But I can't live in this house like this. I'm going crazy, and I smell like a labrador.
I don't know how I'm going to survive this summer, really. I think the reason I had such a hard time getting through final exams is that I knew there was nothing remotely pleasant to look forward to once they were done. A broken family, a house full of the shit left behind by my horrible deadbeat dad, a pudgy dying dog, a mother who can't see the mess around her or get things done in the proper order, brothers who are so focused on being pissed at my dad that they don't see how much of a problem they are in the house and how much of a mess they make. Okay, yeah, I'm obsessed with the mess. This is perhaps because I'm going completely stir-crazy. In Boston I go a million places every day. I'm always outside and walking around, even in horrible weather. I go places. I have the freedom to go wherever I want with only my feet. Here, I stay home all day. I could walk for a half an hour and still not manage to leave this housing development. I could walk for a half an hour and all of the houses would still look the same. I could walk for a half an hour and not even notice I had gone anywhere. I'm going nowhere. I fucking hate the suburbs. Its the only environment I'll never be comfortable with. I mean, I love visiting the suburbs for shorter periods of time. I could do a week in the suburbs with no problem. I could do a week in the suburbs better if I had a vehicle.
So I need to get a job if I'm going to manage this. If I'm going to get out of the house. Miss LouAnne across the street, one of mom's best friends, told me that if i get my license, she'll let me learn to ride a motorcycle on Sophie's (her daughter) bike and then let me take that to work once I get my bike license. Kind of awesome but no small feat. I can barely drive a car. Though I feel that a motorcycle would be more my style.
Then we have the irony of that situation. My family has been abandoned by a biker. There is a certain irony to handling the situation with my biker dad while riding around on a motorcycle. I like it. Rob says I should write about it and it would make a helluva story. He's right. I should. So to start, I'm blogging. The stuff about my dad I'll probably keep in a file on my laptop. Don't want to air too much dirty laundry in public, you know?
Speaking of Rob, boy do I miss him. I have of course been missing him since September. Okay thats not entirely true. I've been missing him since the day he went away to college. Much more since the day I did. Missing him is perhaps the one and only constant I've had all these years.
I also miss everyone else. And myself. I feel like I've been missing myself for a while now. maybe with nobody else around I'll be able to find me. That didn't work last summer but perhaps the second time, it'll take. Self-discovery isn't exactly what I was hoping to get out of this summer, but maybe it's better.
I'm going to try and find the good in the monotony. Budget my time. Sleep at night, work out in the morning, get things done during the day, write in the afternoon, and sleep again before two a.m. It could happen. I can do this. I can totally do this.
I worry that my "can-do" attitude is just my method of shutting down my emotions. Because it is. But alas, its all I can do to get out of bed into this horrible version of my life. When I lost touch with my emotions, I don't know, but I'm not certain that I'm going to find them until I get this house in order and my family back on track. Wish me luck, I'm going to need a boatload of it.
"Carrying bags and a navy taxi man said
"Take your time love
'Cause you don't have to rush
'Cause it's your life and it's no one else's, sweetheart
Don't let someone put you in a box."
So I take all that other stuff that I said before
And I'm gonna make it work
'Cause I'm losing my mind and it's driving me up the wall "
-Kate Nash, "Navy Taxi"
Monday, April 6, 2009
Its funny...
You used to be my hero, and now my biggest fear is ending up like you.
I hope it was worth it.
I hope it was worth it.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Two Poems for Sarah Fish
I say, as we have said so many times
To the sister of my soul, with love.
To the woman who takes
The verbal snapshots we aren’t quick enough for.
Who takes our fleeting young emotions
And digital-aged communications
And finds beauty
Wonderment.
Oh, brave new world that has such poetry in it!
Awestruck Miranda herself would be pressed to be as moved as I,
Upon reading your lettered sculptures.
Though, it is true, I am as untrained in great words as her eyes were untrained on men.
Still, it was her openness to beauty
That lent credit to her exclamations.
And so I, captive to your words at
Pen-point
Read on as though you were Dickenson, Sappho, Shakespeare,
Or some other pirate of my eyes and mind,
Rather than the sister with whom my soul grew,
The tree whose branches mine confuses with,
Watered in a small town, drowned in a city,
Revived in a poem.
You are the tree-surgeon of my heart.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
In my home there is a Fish.
My favorite Fish of the sea.
You may say there are others there,
But only one Fish for me.
With her mighty tail she calms the tides,
Her gills take toxic waste in stride,
She smiles at me when I scuba dive
And writes sweet words for me.
Though far away, my Sarah Fish
Is just my cup of tea!
To the sister of my soul, with love.
To the woman who takes
The verbal snapshots we aren’t quick enough for.
Who takes our fleeting young emotions
And digital-aged communications
And finds beauty
Wonderment.
Oh, brave new world that has such poetry in it!
Awestruck Miranda herself would be pressed to be as moved as I,
Upon reading your lettered sculptures.
Though, it is true, I am as untrained in great words as her eyes were untrained on men.
Still, it was her openness to beauty
That lent credit to her exclamations.
And so I, captive to your words at
Pen-point
Read on as though you were Dickenson, Sappho, Shakespeare,
Or some other pirate of my eyes and mind,
Rather than the sister with whom my soul grew,
The tree whose branches mine confuses with,
Watered in a small town, drowned in a city,
Revived in a poem.
You are the tree-surgeon of my heart.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
In my home there is a Fish.
My favorite Fish of the sea.
You may say there are others there,
But only one Fish for me.
With her mighty tail she calms the tides,
Her gills take toxic waste in stride,
She smiles at me when I scuba dive
And writes sweet words for me.
Though far away, my Sarah Fish
Is just my cup of tea!
A Night Collected: 3.21.09, 2 a.m.
Memories beg for a space on the page
beside the timestamp and the picture of your
Mother’s house.
The cursor blinks judgmentally at me, asking, “Who will it be tonight?”
Will it be Passion, will it be Regret?
Will it be Slow Decay and Wasted Breath?
Will you just get wasted and give it away
To whatever comes to mind?
Memories taunt.
They hike up their skirts and show you the
Terrible
Beautiful
Dramatic
Traumatic
Terrifying things you have done and seen,
Inviting you with a chance at the ultimate intimacy.
To be fondled in the mind and then splattered on a page
is all they suffer to want.
Memories are
whores like that.
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
50 CENT NECKLACE
A brass chain with a brass bird
hung on a hook above to my grandmother’s pearls,
and all the finer things you gave to me
because it is my favorite of them all.
I like to think it belongs there,
I like to think that I, not circumstance, may choose where I put it.
But my mother came into my bedroom unbidden and put the brass chain
and the brass bird
into the drawer where I prefer to keep my socks.
I wanted you beside me,
Rather, I wanted me beside you
(to be where you are)
And I couldn’t even strategically position myself.
How then, reaching from where I am,
Could I strain and stretch to grasp at you?
Let alone, move you closer to me.
My fingertips graze--
A cookie jar out of reach of a toddler—
The smell of you in your leather jacket—
The feel of my fingertips on your brow—
Brushes with fate, pieces of love that touch
But that I cannot hold firmly.
Please wait for me—if not faithfully, then truthfully.
Screw who you want to, but leave me a place near you.
Let me hang myself from a brass chain around your neck,
a tarnished bird beneath the pearls of your eyes.
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
BRAIDS
We divide in three
And weave a rope
To hang ourselves
And our princes by.
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
SLUMP
Sophomore Slump.
A fact-myth we live,
never feared, like the Freshman 15.
We never do dread the right things.
We fear for our waists
and waste our hearts.
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
GREEN TEA
The teapot calls the kettle black, while the tea goes green and bitter with envy, oversteeped.
Was there ever so great a crime
(or so common)
as hypocrisy?
As ignoring what is most central to both of us for the sake of pinning
the title we both deserve
on one another in anger?
Rather than granting within ourselves that the name is appropriate
That we have earned it
That we are each, deep down, that kind of girl.
That those girls are
these girls, and we have let ourselves go.
No.
We let the bag sit, seeping into the drink for too long to taste good.
Black kettle, black pot.
Green tea.
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
A nanny comes home from work to drunk friends. Life is sameness.
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
TEXT MESSAGES
Why do I send you
text messages
instead of calling and hearing
Your darling voice,
when it is all I want to hear over the din of the city?
Because a text message is noncommittal.
It hides the flaws and indiscretions you might have just overlooked
in three years of talking
but would somehow notice now, over the sound of the subway trains outside the window
And my drunk roommates.
I type “I miss you” because, spoken aloud,
You would know I mean “I love you”
Every time.
-RCE
beside the timestamp and the picture of your
Mother’s house.
The cursor blinks judgmentally at me, asking, “Who will it be tonight?”
Will it be Passion, will it be Regret?
Will it be Slow Decay and Wasted Breath?
Will you just get wasted and give it away
To whatever comes to mind?
Memories taunt.
They hike up their skirts and show you the
Terrible
Beautiful
Dramatic
Traumatic
Terrifying things you have done and seen,
Inviting you with a chance at the ultimate intimacy.
To be fondled in the mind and then splattered on a page
is all they suffer to want.
Memories are
whores like that.
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
50 CENT NECKLACE
A brass chain with a brass bird
hung on a hook above to my grandmother’s pearls,
and all the finer things you gave to me
because it is my favorite of them all.
I like to think it belongs there,
I like to think that I, not circumstance, may choose where I put it.
But my mother came into my bedroom unbidden and put the brass chain
and the brass bird
into the drawer where I prefer to keep my socks.
I wanted you beside me,
Rather, I wanted me beside you
(to be where you are)
And I couldn’t even strategically position myself.
How then, reaching from where I am,
Could I strain and stretch to grasp at you?
Let alone, move you closer to me.
My fingertips graze--
A cookie jar out of reach of a toddler—
The smell of you in your leather jacket—
The feel of my fingertips on your brow—
Brushes with fate, pieces of love that touch
But that I cannot hold firmly.
Please wait for me—if not faithfully, then truthfully.
Screw who you want to, but leave me a place near you.
Let me hang myself from a brass chain around your neck,
a tarnished bird beneath the pearls of your eyes.
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
BRAIDS
We divide in three
And weave a rope
To hang ourselves
And our princes by.
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
SLUMP
Sophomore Slump.
A fact-myth we live,
never feared, like the Freshman 15.
We never do dread the right things.
We fear for our waists
and waste our hearts.
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
GREEN TEA
The teapot calls the kettle black, while the tea goes green and bitter with envy, oversteeped.
Was there ever so great a crime
(or so common)
as hypocrisy?
As ignoring what is most central to both of us for the sake of pinning
the title we both deserve
on one another in anger?
Rather than granting within ourselves that the name is appropriate
That we have earned it
That we are each, deep down, that kind of girl.
That those girls are
these girls, and we have let ourselves go.
No.
We let the bag sit, seeping into the drink for too long to taste good.
Black kettle, black pot.
Green tea.
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
A nanny comes home from work to drunk friends. Life is sameness.
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
TEXT MESSAGES
Why do I send you
text messages
instead of calling and hearing
Your darling voice,
when it is all I want to hear over the din of the city?
Because a text message is noncommittal.
It hides the flaws and indiscretions you might have just overlooked
in three years of talking
but would somehow notice now, over the sound of the subway trains outside the window
And my drunk roommates.
I type “I miss you” because, spoken aloud,
You would know I mean “I love you”
Every time.
-RCE
Monday, March 2, 2009
Upon Meeting the Devil: First Draft: Part One
His laughter, which began on the page, bubbled then out of his scalp, tumbled down the spiral tangles of his hair, and fell again onto his handwritten manuscript. A young woman watched him working from behind a cash register, drawn in by the life cycle of his rapture. On that evening he had finished his book, a collection of short stories, right there in front of her. At precisely the time the café closed, she walked over to clean off the table next to him, and she watched as he wrote and underlined his final word. The rolling scratch of his pen felt like the end of a great society or natural disaster. Then he waited to read her his work. Ignoring the closing announcement, he hid between the chairs until her laughter gave his position away. Then he waited outside to read her the story he had been telling her about at the cash register all night. As she walked out, she wondered what she would do if it was terrible. Two sentences in she was certain she would never be the same. A complete stranger. The love of her life was the written word, and this man had charmed the written word away from her, making it at once alien and more attractive for its infidelity. Today, however, he was simply reading a book.
Every thirty minutes or so, he would leave his small table and come to her for another small hot water to steep his own tea in. Then, while his tea steeped, he would roll himself a cigarette, adding his own filters and carefully sealing the thin paper with just the tip of his tongue. The young woman would watch him intently, behind the ungainly machine that dispensed the espresso, as he rolled cigarettes for himself. While he went outside and smoked, she imagined that he leaned against the brick building with one leg on the ground, the other on the wall, letting curls of smoke up into the rainy night. She kept an eye on his book, his bag and his hat with the feather, lest they be stolen, as they sat and waited for him to return.
The other girls asked her, between customers, what was going on with that finance major, did he call? Well yes, he had called. And he said…I don’t remember what he said, but it was all about going to bed. He could make the weather report into a crude suggestion, but that was not the kind of thing she was after. She wanted to live up to the notion that humans are such stuff as dreams are made on, but with the finance major she was just a wet dream. Once he’d had her in the dark and then seen her in the daylight, she knew he’d never call again. Or at least, a part of her hoped that he wouldn’t. She had been sucked into his life, somehow, willingly, but now couldn’t escape until he got what he wanted. He wanted a mother figure.
Enter, once more, the writer, and she would stop talking about the finance major. He walked into the café as though he had just walked off of the tip of Fitzgerald’s pen. His walk would strike her every time, every step. It was confident without pretention. His feet landed on the ground exactly where he meant them to, but it seemed he would be delighted should they decide to go off on their own. He smiled at her as he went by. She was hooked. Ever since she had heard his story. A complete stranger. And perhaps he was the devil. Perhaps, like he had told her over tea, the devil didn’t want us to do what we did. He would present two options and let us decide. And we would invariably fuck it up.
And so the options were presented to her, one afternoon.
She brought the finance major into the café. He was out of work and “taking time off” from school. She was trying to help him get a job. She bought him coffee. She saw him, that writer, sitting reading the first page of the same book she’d sworn she’d seen him read last week. She leaned in, and tapped his shoulder. He disentangled his headphones and sat up straight, taking in the barista and the finance major. He quickly outcharmed the charmer, as devils often do, and the two men sat down on either side of her. Her knees were touching them both, and her heart was desperately trying to escape through the hinge of her right leg. There was a beehive in her head.
“I say you take the year off! You’re twenty, you live in America, you shouldn’t have to work. Read the classics, learn a language, draw up the ultimate business plan. But then, I have a rather humanistic worldview. I think you should just live.” With his final word to the banker, the writer took out his tobacco, paper, and filters to roll himself another cigarette. She finally got to see the process up close. From her seat she could smell the tobacco, and she watched him seal the first cigarette. He noted her interest, and rolled a second.
“Are you going to smoke two?” The finance major inquired.
“No. She is going to join me outside on a lovely day for a cigarette.”
And she did, leaving a flabbergasted finance major in the café behind her. She went out the door and down the escalator with the writer. Would it be overdone to say that she was drawn to him like a magnet, powerless to do anything but follow him? It would be too overdone.
He lit one cigarette in his mouth and passed it to her, then lit his own, as they went out the revolving door. She didn’t want to smoke, she protested, so he told her to hold it for a while and talk with him. He didn’t stand the way she had imagined, but she found that she did herself. He stood with his back to the wind; his tangled black hair like the halo of a saint around his young, medieval face.
“I’m sad that you’re moving to Colorado. But I’m very glad that I met you. Is that strange to say?” She felt a surge of honesty as she realized this may be her only time spent alone with that man who had captivated her so very quickly.
“No, I hear that a lot.”
“I used to hear that a lot, when I was more interesting.” She mused to herself.
“You are uninteresting? Then why have I brought you out here? Why did I bother to steal you away from your date?” he joked.
“I’m not interesting to myself anymore, I suppose.”
“You seem to hold what’s-his-name’s interest.” His comment knocked her off guard.
“Derek? He’s a finance major.”
“So this means?
“I’m not certain that I want to hold his interest. He doesn’t thrill me. And he’s not interested in me, he just wants to have sex with anything that moves.”
“On those lines, do you know what would be interesting? It would be interesting to spend time alone with you before we head our separate ways. What time is it? Six? We could have only a few hours at the most, forty-five minutes at best. But I would still love to see what you are like in bed.”
He reached out and took the second cigarette from her, putting both in his mouth and smoking them together, one in each corner of his mischevious smile. She imagined him, then, as the modern incarnation of her idol, William Shakespeare. He had it all down. There was the sly smile, the way with words. The look of the creative genius. The beautiful face. The unassuming charm. All that she imagined Shakespeare to be was standing in front of her, wanting one night with her with no strings attached. Not even one night; wanting an hour! Wanting one city to offer the perfect farewell rather than urban indifference.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, “I’ll meet you here at eight thirty. If I don’t get here by nine, I couldn’t make it.”
As they went back inside, her hands were shaking. She was fired up, her every emotion exploding onto her face.
“You’re going to have to calm down a bit before we get back to your date.”
“I can fake anything. I’m an actress.”
“You act?”
“I write plays. How could I do that without experience?”
They made this the new topic of conversation. In they went. And fake it, she did. The writer left with his sometimes lover, who stopped by to pick him up. Their last brief outing before he took off, no doubt. His history with her entranced the girl in the café. This woman, who he was now merely entangled with, had his baby nearly five years ago. They named their daughter Miranda. Miranda, after the daughter of Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This was the café girl’s favorite piece of writing, and her heart skipped a beat when she learned he had named his child Miranda. It was Miranda who, upon seeing a man for the first time, uttered, “Oh brave new world that has such people in it!” and fell in love eternal on the spot. Who, through a life banal and limited, was ever enchanted. What a vision to have for his daughter. However, the couple who adopted her renamed her Kate. Shakespeare’s shrew. The girl was as disgusted as the writer must have been upon hearing this. The finance major merely nodded, as if to say, “Well yes, adoptive parents rename babies.” Fool.
The girl went home with her finance major. She had dinner with him, and the clock ticked closer and closer to eight thirty. She thought about how to make him go away, how to tell him that she would rather spend three hours with the writer than all night with him. She thought about saying, “Derek, I know you want to sleep with me tonight, but truly, there is a man waiting for me who stimulates my mind. I have to go to him now. Hate me if you will.” She thought about saying, “I have to do a lot of work tonight. Perhaps we had best do this next week.” Most of all, she thought about saying, “Please go away.” But she didn’t do any of this.
“I have to go back to the café and check my schedule for next week, I can’t believe I didn’t check it when I was there earlier!” And Derek volunteered to go with her. He was persistent, he was determined to have sex with her that night, and she knew that was his only intent. And yes, that was the writer’s only intent, too. They were no different in what they offered. Identical choices it would seem. But then, if the choices had been identical, she wouldn’t have been able to make the wrong one.
Every thirty minutes or so, he would leave his small table and come to her for another small hot water to steep his own tea in. Then, while his tea steeped, he would roll himself a cigarette, adding his own filters and carefully sealing the thin paper with just the tip of his tongue. The young woman would watch him intently, behind the ungainly machine that dispensed the espresso, as he rolled cigarettes for himself. While he went outside and smoked, she imagined that he leaned against the brick building with one leg on the ground, the other on the wall, letting curls of smoke up into the rainy night. She kept an eye on his book, his bag and his hat with the feather, lest they be stolen, as they sat and waited for him to return.
The other girls asked her, between customers, what was going on with that finance major, did he call? Well yes, he had called. And he said…I don’t remember what he said, but it was all about going to bed. He could make the weather report into a crude suggestion, but that was not the kind of thing she was after. She wanted to live up to the notion that humans are such stuff as dreams are made on, but with the finance major she was just a wet dream. Once he’d had her in the dark and then seen her in the daylight, she knew he’d never call again. Or at least, a part of her hoped that he wouldn’t. She had been sucked into his life, somehow, willingly, but now couldn’t escape until he got what he wanted. He wanted a mother figure.
Enter, once more, the writer, and she would stop talking about the finance major. He walked into the café as though he had just walked off of the tip of Fitzgerald’s pen. His walk would strike her every time, every step. It was confident without pretention. His feet landed on the ground exactly where he meant them to, but it seemed he would be delighted should they decide to go off on their own. He smiled at her as he went by. She was hooked. Ever since she had heard his story. A complete stranger. And perhaps he was the devil. Perhaps, like he had told her over tea, the devil didn’t want us to do what we did. He would present two options and let us decide. And we would invariably fuck it up.
And so the options were presented to her, one afternoon.
She brought the finance major into the café. He was out of work and “taking time off” from school. She was trying to help him get a job. She bought him coffee. She saw him, that writer, sitting reading the first page of the same book she’d sworn she’d seen him read last week. She leaned in, and tapped his shoulder. He disentangled his headphones and sat up straight, taking in the barista and the finance major. He quickly outcharmed the charmer, as devils often do, and the two men sat down on either side of her. Her knees were touching them both, and her heart was desperately trying to escape through the hinge of her right leg. There was a beehive in her head.
“I say you take the year off! You’re twenty, you live in America, you shouldn’t have to work. Read the classics, learn a language, draw up the ultimate business plan. But then, I have a rather humanistic worldview. I think you should just live.” With his final word to the banker, the writer took out his tobacco, paper, and filters to roll himself another cigarette. She finally got to see the process up close. From her seat she could smell the tobacco, and she watched him seal the first cigarette. He noted her interest, and rolled a second.
“Are you going to smoke two?” The finance major inquired.
“No. She is going to join me outside on a lovely day for a cigarette.”
And she did, leaving a flabbergasted finance major in the café behind her. She went out the door and down the escalator with the writer. Would it be overdone to say that she was drawn to him like a magnet, powerless to do anything but follow him? It would be too overdone.
He lit one cigarette in his mouth and passed it to her, then lit his own, as they went out the revolving door. She didn’t want to smoke, she protested, so he told her to hold it for a while and talk with him. He didn’t stand the way she had imagined, but she found that she did herself. He stood with his back to the wind; his tangled black hair like the halo of a saint around his young, medieval face.
“I’m sad that you’re moving to Colorado. But I’m very glad that I met you. Is that strange to say?” She felt a surge of honesty as she realized this may be her only time spent alone with that man who had captivated her so very quickly.
“No, I hear that a lot.”
“I used to hear that a lot, when I was more interesting.” She mused to herself.
“You are uninteresting? Then why have I brought you out here? Why did I bother to steal you away from your date?” he joked.
“I’m not interesting to myself anymore, I suppose.”
“You seem to hold what’s-his-name’s interest.” His comment knocked her off guard.
“Derek? He’s a finance major.”
“So this means?
“I’m not certain that I want to hold his interest. He doesn’t thrill me. And he’s not interested in me, he just wants to have sex with anything that moves.”
“On those lines, do you know what would be interesting? It would be interesting to spend time alone with you before we head our separate ways. What time is it? Six? We could have only a few hours at the most, forty-five minutes at best. But I would still love to see what you are like in bed.”
He reached out and took the second cigarette from her, putting both in his mouth and smoking them together, one in each corner of his mischevious smile. She imagined him, then, as the modern incarnation of her idol, William Shakespeare. He had it all down. There was the sly smile, the way with words. The look of the creative genius. The beautiful face. The unassuming charm. All that she imagined Shakespeare to be was standing in front of her, wanting one night with her with no strings attached. Not even one night; wanting an hour! Wanting one city to offer the perfect farewell rather than urban indifference.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, “I’ll meet you here at eight thirty. If I don’t get here by nine, I couldn’t make it.”
As they went back inside, her hands were shaking. She was fired up, her every emotion exploding onto her face.
“You’re going to have to calm down a bit before we get back to your date.”
“I can fake anything. I’m an actress.”
“You act?”
“I write plays. How could I do that without experience?”
They made this the new topic of conversation. In they went. And fake it, she did. The writer left with his sometimes lover, who stopped by to pick him up. Their last brief outing before he took off, no doubt. His history with her entranced the girl in the café. This woman, who he was now merely entangled with, had his baby nearly five years ago. They named their daughter Miranda. Miranda, after the daughter of Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This was the café girl’s favorite piece of writing, and her heart skipped a beat when she learned he had named his child Miranda. It was Miranda who, upon seeing a man for the first time, uttered, “Oh brave new world that has such people in it!” and fell in love eternal on the spot. Who, through a life banal and limited, was ever enchanted. What a vision to have for his daughter. However, the couple who adopted her renamed her Kate. Shakespeare’s shrew. The girl was as disgusted as the writer must have been upon hearing this. The finance major merely nodded, as if to say, “Well yes, adoptive parents rename babies.” Fool.
The girl went home with her finance major. She had dinner with him, and the clock ticked closer and closer to eight thirty. She thought about how to make him go away, how to tell him that she would rather spend three hours with the writer than all night with him. She thought about saying, “Derek, I know you want to sleep with me tonight, but truly, there is a man waiting for me who stimulates my mind. I have to go to him now. Hate me if you will.” She thought about saying, “I have to do a lot of work tonight. Perhaps we had best do this next week.” Most of all, she thought about saying, “Please go away.” But she didn’t do any of this.
“I have to go back to the café and check my schedule for next week, I can’t believe I didn’t check it when I was there earlier!” And Derek volunteered to go with her. He was persistent, he was determined to have sex with her that night, and she knew that was his only intent. And yes, that was the writer’s only intent, too. They were no different in what they offered. Identical choices it would seem. But then, if the choices had been identical, she wouldn’t have been able to make the wrong one.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
...but clouds got in my way
When you make a major life change, even if to an outsider it's not so major, you might start to drift. If you are me, you might spend October, November, December and the better part of January in a hole in your own head. You leave the lights off in the daytime. You look at prom pictures when you are trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep at night. During the day you can't bear to be awake in the same room as those same damned pictures, so you sleep through all of your classes. You spend hours listening to "our song" over and over again on a Tuesday, but on Wednesday you have a nervous breakdown if someone on the street is humming the tune (or one similar). You play sad songs for your lost loved ones but forget to think about the good times. You play dead.
And then, one day, you are alive again. No, you're not the happiest person on the planet, and you have no idea where your life is going, but for some reason, you've woken up in your own bed, and you are so glad to be there. You are glad for the heartache of that first boy, because that means you really loved him. You are glad for the pain and emptiness you feel losing your best friend, because that means she touched your soul and will always be with you. You are still pissed that you work all the time, but you are glad to maybe pay your bills. You start to do your laundry. You stop doing the dishes so often. You start turning the light on in the morning when you wake up. You start shaving your legs on a regular basis again. You start wearing perfume again. You think very seriously about painting your nails, and deem it impractical. You show up for class.
And you remember, most of all, what is important to you. Not being who you were in high school (awesome though she may have been), not having a relationship or being pretty, or even being all-the-way happy (yet). What is important is taking care of yourself and your friends. Being there for one another if at all possible. Getting up in the morning and living your life, and living it with people who you love and who love you, too. Even if you are fucking miserable, you are alive. And that becomes a positive once more. When your feet hurt from a nine hour shift and you haven't eaten in twelve hours, when your boss looks at you as if he's finally realized that you are mentally handicapped after all, when your friend goes through the same sadness you did for the same reason and you know you can't fix it, when you hear crazy sex going on in the dorm room above your head and you're trying to get to sleep (and then you recognize a voice, of all the embarrassing things), when your parents are more fucked up than you are and need you to help them solve problems that they are too young for, when you can't find your left work shoe and you've been late for ten minutes, when the subway train goes past you without stopping, when you find a note you never gave to someone who will never want to read it now, when your dead best friend's daughter is bullied and has no mother to turn to anymore so she turns to you, when you can't move from not knowing which direction to move in. That's just how you know you're alive, sometimes. And you know what? Life is beautiful. Terrible, and wonderful, and beautiful.
And I think that I might be a grownup.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
So many things I might have done...
I wrote a poem. I didn't realize that, on my quest to match blog titles to the lyrics of "Both Sides Now", I came to the perfect one today. This poem is, in essence, about the things I might have done (but clouds got in my way). It tries to tell me "why" from my own perspective, a futile effort. Its not beautifully written or perfectly wonderful, or probably even half decent, but you know what, I am rather proud of getting my own point across to myself. Sometimes I'm a hard person to get a point across to, so if I get it, I figure its gettable.
Also, I'm taking this opportunity to mention that i have defined the human condition to my satisfaction. Probably an unsuitable definition to the rest of the world, but a peaceful one for me.
Human beings, for whatever reason, crave two things more than anything else. We wish to know WHY things are the way they are, and WHAT IF things were different? That is, we want to understand the reason we are here, and what things would be like if something in events that shaped the present had not happened the way it did.
However, WHY and WHAT IF are elements of the portion of our consciousness we perceive as "the past", which simply means that they no longer exist in our current mental frame but we are still aware that they may have once existed. Because they are no longer a part of our active perception, they are unchangeable, and any dissatisfaction with the world that we actively perceive may be thought about in terms of alterations to this “past” without actually having an actual effect on anything but our outlook on the present.
Anyway. Below, you will find a poem. Enjoy it, if you can. It is a first draft, and as such, I wrote it an hour ago and have only read it a very few times. That means that your opinion is as informed as mine, and would be much appreciated.
<3
I picked up a handful of dirt
(a bit of earth)
for you today.
I held it in my hand for a moment.
Jostled it, like a handful of coins.
Hefted it in my palm.
I could smell the ground
The outdoors
Like that second date, in the park
At the end of summer
(my favorite time)
In the woods, by a river
(my favorite place)
Bound, without touching, to your side.
I can see your face there, too,
In the dirt.
The brown of your eyes
(now don’t be offended…
…I prefer them to any other eyes, you know…
they’ve ruined me, so,
for other men).
It clings, a bit, to the lines in my hand
Settles in, more than adheres
Gradually filling in the empty places
And every move I make,
Though the move be to dislodge,
to leave the dirt as it was,
(to keep my hands clean)
It is the deeper settled.
Like a fog between the mountains
Where we spent our days
Or dust filling in spaces between pages
On a library shelf
It sifts, it sits, and becomes commonplace.
And suddenly, a clean hand seems
Unintentionally incorrect.
Could I wash this hand empty,
Now that it is made different by
is Defined by
is Touched by
This little bit of earth?
But I am young, irresponsible
And so set
On following the rules
On keeping to the code
On pleasing my grandmother
(with my clean hands and polished nails).
Can’t keep dirt in my hand when they all want me
To clutch wildly at diamonds.
I see so much life
In this fistful of dirt.
And a diamond is dead, compressed, cold.
I want to tell them
That you can't make things grow
In a fistful of diamonds.
And things that glitter
Also tarnish, with age.
If you show me a potato that grew from a gemstone
I’ll eat it, and my hat.
But they won’t abide dirty hands,
(unpopular choices)
or a simple life
(without artificial sparkle)
in the mountains.
So I ball my fist around my little bit of earth
Of life
(of you)
I close my eyes,
And whisper a prayer that something beautiful will grow from it.
And, unceremoniously
fling it into the air.
Also, I'm taking this opportunity to mention that i have defined the human condition to my satisfaction. Probably an unsuitable definition to the rest of the world, but a peaceful one for me.
Human beings, for whatever reason, crave two things more than anything else. We wish to know WHY things are the way they are, and WHAT IF things were different? That is, we want to understand the reason we are here, and what things would be like if something in events that shaped the present had not happened the way it did.
However, WHY and WHAT IF are elements of the portion of our consciousness we perceive as "the past", which simply means that they no longer exist in our current mental frame but we are still aware that they may have once existed. Because they are no longer a part of our active perception, they are unchangeable, and any dissatisfaction with the world that we actively perceive may be thought about in terms of alterations to this “past” without actually having an actual effect on anything but our outlook on the present.
Anyway. Below, you will find a poem. Enjoy it, if you can. It is a first draft, and as such, I wrote it an hour ago and have only read it a very few times. That means that your opinion is as informed as mine, and would be much appreciated.
<3
I picked up a handful of dirt
(a bit of earth)
for you today.
I held it in my hand for a moment.
Jostled it, like a handful of coins.
Hefted it in my palm.
I could smell the ground
The outdoors
Like that second date, in the park
At the end of summer
(my favorite time)
In the woods, by a river
(my favorite place)
Bound, without touching, to your side.
I can see your face there, too,
In the dirt.
The brown of your eyes
(now don’t be offended…
…I prefer them to any other eyes, you know…
they’ve ruined me, so,
for other men).
It clings, a bit, to the lines in my hand
Settles in, more than adheres
Gradually filling in the empty places
And every move I make,
Though the move be to dislodge,
to leave the dirt as it was,
(to keep my hands clean)
It is the deeper settled.
Like a fog between the mountains
Where we spent our days
Or dust filling in spaces between pages
On a library shelf
It sifts, it sits, and becomes commonplace.
And suddenly, a clean hand seems
Unintentionally incorrect.
Could I wash this hand empty,
Now that it is made different by
is Defined by
is Touched by
This little bit of earth?
But I am young, irresponsible
And so set
On following the rules
On keeping to the code
On pleasing my grandmother
(with my clean hands and polished nails).
Can’t keep dirt in my hand when they all want me
To clutch wildly at diamonds.
I see so much life
In this fistful of dirt.
And a diamond is dead, compressed, cold.
I want to tell them
That you can't make things grow
In a fistful of diamonds.
And things that glitter
Also tarnish, with age.
If you show me a potato that grew from a gemstone
I’ll eat it, and my hat.
But they won’t abide dirty hands,
(unpopular choices)
or a simple life
(without artificial sparkle)
in the mountains.
So I ball my fist around my little bit of earth
Of life
(of you)
I close my eyes,
And whisper a prayer that something beautiful will grow from it.
And, unceremoniously
fling it into the air.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)