The woods are Lovely, Dark, and Deep

it's been a while. here, have some poetry.

2009-03-04T22:27:58Z

in honor of my almost entirely finished rough draft, I've decided to post the present versions of the three poems and blog entry from each sequence of the second half of my thesis. if nothing else, I expect these will be amusing to look back on in a month's time when they'll hopefully have undergone some major transformations.

Technical note: Tildes (~) indicate page breaks.

“But what I found as I was writing these pieces is that it was like being a kite. You know, I could, I was flying to these other places, the wind was carrying me to these other places, but I was always, there was always this string that drew me back to Michigan, fresh water, big weather, inland seas”
- Anne-Marie Oomen

~

1.

There’s a difference between a dot on a map and the core that you’ll never get over, the smells that linger in your blood.

2.

And if I told you that you are my tether, would you reel me in or let me fly?

3.

Her smile pulls me awake and for a moment, I’m unsure which room, which house, which country envelops me in the sighing stillness of midnight.

4.

Home, she said, lives at the corner of her jaw and earlobe, tugging metaphysically each time she recalls her mother’s perfume.

~

I’m always drawn to write poems about airports. There are rules and regulations; times and dates; security and excess baggage claims. There are couples fighting and couples kissing and couples lying, exhausted, on the last comfortable inches of one another. Arrivals and ellipses; surprises, tears, and little white lies to get you past the man at the desk who’s just dying to give you hell. And maybe the poems are never actually about airports, but about the people they take you to or the people they take you from, and I’m sure you know by now that I’d go anywhere for you. But then the microcosm of the airport never lasts; there’s luggage to unload and lives to rearrange and nothing is ever the same as it was waiting for your plane. And I guess that’s how it should be, because only fools write poems about love.

~

if I cradle this Superior stone, will you
feel me, though I’m an ocean away?
if I polish it with my worries, will you
remember them as your own?
if I drop this Superior stone in the river, will you
stop working to grieve our loss?
is it time, is this the time to grieve our loss?

~

Les Ficelles du Cerf-Volant 26 August, 2008

Not tomorrow, not the next day, but the next day, I leave for France. And I still have heard nothing from either the Crémons or the people in Noisy-le-Roi who will be hosting me or organizing my visit. Neither of these facts particularly sets me on edge: I know that everything will work out just fine. But I don’t want this experience to start out with a disappointment or an annoyance. Perhaps the Crémons don’t realize I’ll be leaving the US in 3 days; after all, I’m coming to them a week later. They have another whole week to prepare for this madness. And, like Debra said, different cultures have different conceptions of a “prompt reply.” It’s frustrating, but I must have faith that it will somehow work itself out.

During my research this summer, one of the authors I interviewed likened traveling abroad to flying a kite: even though she, the kite, may be on a different continent, her kite strings still lead her back to the state and state of mind of Michigan. Knowing this, my mom thought it would be fun to go to Lake Michigan and actually fly a kite just to celebrate that I’ll soon be leaving and will be tied to this place by those same kite strings.

So we packed up the car, complete with my dad’s vintage kite and headed for South Haven. When we got there, I was anxious to get the kite in the air; it was a beautiful, windy day. Out of the bag, the strings were easy to untangle. I had my mom to help hold the kite and one of the handles (this kite, in all its top-of-the-line fanciness, has two) and together we had it untangled in less than 5 minutes. I flew it for fifteen minutes or so, running all around the beach and calling back to my mom once in a while; she tried to take pictures; I tried to get it to fly higher. But after running all around the beach and running into more than a couple obstacles, I was tired and out-of-breath. I neatly folded up the kite strings and headed back to our blanket.

In the process of getting back to the blanket and running around a little with my niece, the kite strings somehow, inexplicably, got knotted. Only I knew at the core of me that they weren’t really knotted; just a few minutes previously I had, I was certain, ensured that they wouldn’t become just that. Still, as I looked down at the rats’ nest in my lap I couldn’t help but think that I’d gotten myself into a mess. A big mess. But I know I’m good with knots and I didn’t really have anything else I had to or wanted to do at the moment. So I sat down to get them untied.
It definitely wasn’t an easy task. Even though I knew all along that the strings weren’t really knotted and that it was just a matter of holding them right and letting them work themselves out, I still managed to get myself into plenty of tight situations. Diligently, I worked at it for what must have been half an hour; I wasn’t frustrated, really; as I said, I had nothing else I really wanted to do.

But when my mom came over to tell me it was time for lunch and when my niece followed her to see what Aunt Michelle was doing on the blanket for so long, I started to panic. I started running into actual knots; but since there were no actual knots to begin with, I knew that they were knots that I myself had created. This, for some reason, was frustrating beyond compare and when I knew that I was finally down to the end, when there was just one knot left to go, I got so frustrated that I almost gave up. It was only one knot. The strings would probably get knotted again before anybody used this kite again, if anybody used this kite again. My stomach was rumbling; the sun was suddenly pounding down on my back. The strings started to come apart in my fingers and I thought that I couldn’t possibly get it done. But then, by some miracle, it came undone. I just had to push it the right way and there lay the strings in my lap, untangled. Will anybody ever notice what work I’ve put into it? I’m not sure. But I felt good, in the end, and I know I wouldn’t have felt nearly so good if I’d given up.

I’ll leave it to you to discern the transparent metaphor there. In any case, I’m not going to let the reticence from France get me down. I know what I need to do and I’m confident that the rest will eventually become untangled. “Eventually” is a funny word, with only 72 hours left on this continent, but it’s the situation that I find myself in, and that’s all I can really address. I know it will work out. I know it will be an adventure. For all I know, I could come away frustrated and sun burnt, but I know I’ll still be content that I went for it and didn’t give up.

-Michelle

“When I write I think of what I write as actual, rather than writing metaphor… when I say something like ‘On the night river I trade my lips for the darkness’ that's not metaphor to me… it's something real in my head.”
- Michael Delp

~

1.

Just past the dam, the water is most still. Yet a part of the river, unbound; the structured cement, avoided. Apprehensive of the stopping, the waiting, rebounding. But it does not know how best to rejoin the flow.

2.

Half deer, half human, the trail winds away from solace toward the maddening swirl of water falling, foaming at the mouth of the river.

3.

The key to my unlocking is movement. So natural to the river, stagnation is unknowable. And yet, the trees fall, beavers dam, man creates, destroys, impedes. Now the thing that is most essential becomes impossible and I’m left staring, river water still, at my reflection.

4.

There is nothing of the river in me that cannot be stilled by the terror of the dam, avoided.

~

With my back pressed to a giant, I feel the history coursing within its bark. Each furrow, a decade, each rut, a rainstorm. I turn to face it, stare openly at its exposition on the nature of time, its scars objective reminders of what comes, what will come. I share with it my restlessness, it offers me a prayer of silent peace, unperturbed by my infant innocent displeasure.

~

Literal turned metaphor, my father, at six,
moved to Kalamazoo, expecting cages of steel,
fearsome creatures, smiling toothily –

He came, instead, to a place of Lions in helmets and
Tigers in button-up jerseys, colorful TV action figures;
reality built his cages

out of mortgages and the system of 1974; convinced,
despite them, he could flourish with no college degree, he
wrote poems on blacktop,

read Shakespeare on the third shift and told himself
that he was living his own American Dream. The others
were just fooling themselves.

But thirty years down the line, the flow of poetry has slowed
to a drip; the cages are as strong as ever. And he can’t quite remember
what it’s like outside.

~

A story… 21 July, 2008

Dripping in sweat, swatting at a sea of mosquitoes and stifling my third asthma attack of the last mile, an increasingly vocal part of my mind began to wonder if there was a reason this place was called “Hell.” Maybe it was all some horrible dream; maybe I really had died and Tim (who does an incredible job of appearing completely unaffected by the heat, bugs and hills) was some maniacal servant of the underworld; maybe if I focused hard enough on all the good things I’d done in my life, some greater power would reconsider and I’d be spared… Or maybe I’d just done something crazy in thinking rustic camping, complete with a 7-mile hike in, would be a fun birthday activity.

The whole thing came about when my best friend Tim and I learned the hard way that the Fourth of July is, at bare minimum, a 10-day affair in Michigan camp culture. Since I’m unfortunate enough to have been born just 7 days after the anniversary of America’s independence, we were duly disappointed when we decided that it would be fun to camp along Lake Michigan the weekend of my birthday. Not wanting to give up on a good idea, I methodically checked every campsite along the lake on the DNR’s website, all to no avail. Just as I was about to give up and suggest we camp in a friend’s back yard, I noticed “Blind Lake Campground” listed on the DNR’s drop down menu. The name brought to mind the indescribably beautiful lake that we’d driven to earlier in the summer in Hell, Michigan; it’s both the deepest in the area and the only lake I, or any of the locals had ever seen whose surface changes colors with the currents and lighting. It was lovely to drive up to and as I read the description of the campsites there (glazing over the part about the 7-mile hike-in in favor of the price and availability) I imagined how rewarding the view would be after a little bit of hiking.

And so, the day after my birthday, with our stomachs full of birthday dinner leftovers and our backpacks full of everything my former scout-leader of a mother could think to remind us to stuff into them, we set off for Hell in my 12-year-old Pontiac. As we pulled into the parking lot 3 hours and 2 mixtapes later, I got my first warning sign; this was the same reservation area I’d come to five years before, on a real backpacking trip. That time, we had been armed with Eagle Scouts and Eagle Scout-quality backpacks that made my dinky L.L. Bean school bag look laughable. Still, just because we’d come to the same place didn’t mean we’d be taking the same trails; as I slathered up with bug spray and sunscreen, I convinced myself that we’d taken some special “power-hiker” trails before and that Tim and I would make it to our campsite early enough to watch the sunset with full stomachs and a campfire crackling happily at our backs.

Simply put, I was very very wrong. As much as I’m a firm believer that thinking positively changes more than you can imagine and that with an open mind, no task is truly insurmountable, there gets to be a point where I start to lose my battle with negative-thinking and get a little carried away. That point was around mile 1.5 of our 7-mile hike. The rest was an epic battle between my whining and Tim’s patience (the dear, he’s far too angelic to be a servant of the underworld), accented by maps, strawberries to keep me sane, and godsends in the form of a water pump and a deliciously bug-free bridge. It wasn’t until we reached the campsite just as dusk was starting to fade that I began to consider enjoying myself. I could and probably should write an entire essay (or poem, more likely) about the tree that we camped next to which, in its own strange way, made the whole hike undeniably worth it. For now, however, suffice to know that it brought a smile to my face after an almost laughably arduous journey.

Because in retrospect, it really is laughable. I’m not that out of shape, my asthma really isn’t so horrible and 7 miles, though it took us 5 hours to hike, really isn’t all that far. Tim was tired, sure, and a little sore on the shoulders (mostly thanks to how incredibly prepared my mother ensured we’d be), but he certainly wasn’t having mental debates about his status as a living being. I made it, though, blistered and grumpy as I may have been, and gosh darn it I enjoyed myself. Even though our fire took some persistent coaching and our dinners were only half-cooked; even though I didn’t sleep and have never been able to stand vault toilets; even though I got more bug bites and sunburn in those 24 hours than I had gotten the entire first two months of summer; and even though I could continue this list for quite some time yet – I still loved the experience and plan on doing it again some time. Some drive or possibly some insanity in me enjoys the challenge of being faced with my own physical and mental limitations, especially when they’re ultimately surmountable.

And maybe I’m not the only one who feels like that. Even if other campers are stoic like Tim or armed with the newest gear like the Eagle Scouts I went with before, there’s still a certain resilience one has to tap into to make it out to a place like Blind Lake. The hike may not be whiney and strawberry-fueled like my own and it almost definitely doesn’t include maniacal servants of the underworld; but I know that the challenge of a hiking/camping experience like that is one of the biggest reasons why the campgrounds are packed on holiday weekends. It’s empowering, especially as a Michigander, to be faced with one’s own resilience; it’s something that so many of us use on a day-to-day basis but are never necessarily required to call on so directly. So even if I had to grumble my way through a half-crazy rustic camping trip in Hell, it’s good to know I have that resilience inside of me, should I ever (and goodness knows I probably will) need to use it.

-Michelle

“And things aren’t really rosy there at the moment. And, you know, I try not to be too romantic in my book and I certainly caught a sort of ugly aspect to it, you know? Or dingy, as you say, that’s probably a better word.”
-Bryan Charles

~

1.

Let’s find the oldest tombstone at the top of West Main hill; I’ll bring the cheap wine, you bring the papers, and we can sit there smoking, watching the sun go down.

2.

Glide along the blacktop; look up, feel the wind; drown in the azure to the tune of the east-bound traffic.

3.

Elder oak, you shadowed me when I was small enough to swing in my sister’s dress. I try to cover your still-breathing stump with my body as we sell the estate.

4.

New Year’s Eve, shivering on the beach, waves an angry grey, snow ugly mixed with sand. Wrap an arm around his waist to preserve a touch of warmth, talk little, take it in, remember.

~

Michigan as shit. Michigan as a pile of ash with a windstorm on the way. Michigan as Roy G. Biv, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge and Homes. Michigan as the leaves that just sound crunchier the morning after your first kiss. Michigan as losing. Michigan as lost. Michigan as your mother’s grilled cheese and a bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup. Michigan as Lions and Tigers but never the Chicago Bears. Michigan as a zebra mussel, a small mouthed bass and algae. Michigan as a beautiful, bloody sunset. Michigan as abstraction: as love, as hope. Michigan as a dried up well in Hell.

~

here, the smell of spring is formaldehyde and
horse shit, wafting down the river to our quad:
prim, august buildings in neat rows.

around us, the town exhales her pathetic rattle of death,
a ghost town waiting in the storefronts,
kept open only by virtue of low rent.

we grow, as we are meant to, accept these collocations:
“small town,” “small dying town,” “moving truck,”

because nobody ever stays here, all the
smart ones get out, leaving the storefronts,
the august buildings, to rattle in the spring breeze.

~

A Little Bump… 4 June, 2008

It would be a lie to say that my interview yesterday went well. Frankly it was more challenging than every other wobble I’ve encountered so far with this project put together. It was downright difficult and, yes, I had some soul-searching and a bit of re-considering to do once it was over. But by the end of the day, I decided that it was just a fluke; I hadn’t picked the interviewee myself and from now on, I will. Not to mention, my father, who did pick the interviewee, felt absolutely horrible for having set me up in such a situation. It won’t happen again if anybody has any say in it, and because of that, I’m soldiering on.

There are a list of reasons why I don’t want to share exactly what happened yesterday (the publicity of this blog is at the top of that list) but the worst part was definitely the realization that so many people in this state are either 1) unwilling to discuss what it’s like to live here and/or 2) downright rude when asked about it anyway. That, combined with the “Michigan is SHIT” comments I got in Hell definitely turns the corners of my pleasant interview smile downwards. Yes, I can keep putting on this happy face and putting myself out there like this project definitely requires - but will it be worth it in the end? Or will people just keep being horrible with me, and going home to grumble to their husband/wife/S.O./dog that some annoying privileged college kid came into work today and bothered them about the place they hate?

I was planning on calling this project “Voices from a Land Divided” and yesterday brought the truth of that title to light in a few ways. For all its negativity, there were a few gems of information in the interview: one of which being that my interviewee is a firm believer in both the east-west and north-south/upper-lower split in this state. Unwittingly, he also demonstrated another very important split: the difference between the idealized/romanticized/picturesque-in-the-face-of-adversity portrait painted by so many Michigan writers, and the “real” Michigan, the wretched “former industrial state in economic decline” experienced by most people here on a daily basis. With my interviewee, it was more a disappointment at the differences between the Michigan of his childhood and the Michigan of his adulthood - that is, the negative changes that have happened to Michigan over time. But in any case, there is an increasingly evident difference between the Michigan of the “common man” and the Michigan of poets.

Of course it’s not nearly as simple as merely stating that there’s a difference - anybody could tell you that. But I think I’m going to refocus my questions more now, especially the questions that I aim at authors to look more closely at those differences. There’s practically an army of people in this state who think, like my interviewee, “there’s nothing really special about Michigan…” - yet my living room is currently littered with books of people who seem to think the exact opposite.
For now, though, I have to touch base with all the corners of this project and make sure I’ve got plenty to report on for my meeting tomorrow. I have a feeling I’ll be putting in more than my eight hours today, though I suppose I won’t know until I stop updating this and actually get to work.
-Michelle

“And I know with my students, early on, they’re always using the word ‘about’. ‘I can’t think of anything to write about’. And I slowly, as best I can, try to lead them to place. Their place. And then you write out from that place. And the word ‘about’ starts to disappear.”
- Jack Ridl

~

1.

North wind in my face, sitting thirty dusty steps from the arch of an ancient aqueduct. The Methuselah of trees beneath me, wise.

2.

My mother jokes she should’ve been a short-order cook, so accustomed is she to meeting, perfectly, the demands of her hungry family. Fifteen years as a scout leader and twice as many as a mother, she has no shortage of ingenuity, intuition, grace.

3.

Piccadilly: aglow, with a neon that encircles the shadows of the sparse Sunday crowd in strange rainbows on the wet pavement.

4.

Along the blurred line of forest and dune, runs a creek and beside it a house. Windows bring the outside in; small boundary between place and poet.

~

Inside the museum, there is no real sense of direction. Staircases wind at angles you wouldn’t expect and skip floors or half-floors or mezzanines posing as floors to the point that even though you’re staring at a map, you aren’t exactly sure where you’re standing. You linger before the ironwork the first time you pass through, hurry past it the second time and by the third, your back has started to hurt and you’re wishing you hadn’t thrown away the rest of the Fanta you had with lunch. But you keep looking. You know it’s there, tugging at your peripheral vision, around one of these corners, hiding along that shadowy wall. The other paintings are masterpieces, of course; you can’t contemplate the patience, the discipline, the frustration that must have gone into each canvas you rush past. Still, you rush; still, you seek it out. You enter the room where the guide said it would be barely daring to breathe; you scan the walls for familiar strokes, shapes, colors. Suddenly, perfectly, it’s there, smaller than you imagined, sandwiched between unknowns, unimportants. Eve and the serpent: paint chipping, vivids dulling; the quest suddenly becomes irrelevant standing before this dingy grail.

~

Lazy June, we baited happenstance with
the inborn awareness of the other’s desire;
punch-drunk with the possibility of what could be,
boldly forging towards someplace we did not
know –

On a bench or along an anonymous path, we met, caressing
minds with songs and sympathies to do the work our bodies
never would. Small lawn, like the clearing of a tale
heard as children, we lay with the last rays of a sun still
un-set –

We spoke, without evers or afters, but truths
sometimes too raw for the other to comprehend.
Innocence curtailed, a child deserted, cries heard only
by the callous walls. How could we know the depths
carved by the weight of these histories gone lead,
this canyon of a childhood never allowed to be.

~

The Ridl Place 22 July, 2008

So today I’m thinking about what brought me to this point. Not just “so why did I choose to write my thesis about Michigan again?!” sort of thing but something more fundamental; what is it that drew me to write about this place? What draws others, actual grown-ups (yes, I’ve got the horizontal license now, but I really don’t consider myself a grown-up yet), to spend their lives and their careers focused on a place like this? Obviously, that’s one of the big questions of my thesis so naturally, I’ve got nothing like an answer to it –but I think that maybe looking at my own story might help. Perhaps I’m just a narcissist or haven’t moved beyond Piaget’s toddler stage, but so be it. This is what works for me.

So… Michigan. London. No, Michigan. No, London… They’re intertwined. I’ve got the stock stories of the BBC and my NYU class who thought Kalamazoo was rad, but of course it goes deeper than that. Although to say that my learned affinity for Michigan is related to homesickness isn’t really correct. I was homesick, of course, but I was homesick for being with my friends and doing nothing, for my mom’s cooking, for the smell of my pillows – I wasn’t really homesick for Lake Michigan or the Kalamazoo valley. It’s similar, I suppose, to the way that I feel about London now. When I look at the picture of Big Ben on my closet door, it’s not the sights that I ache for, standing in the shadow of Westminster Abbey, or even standing before my first Blake painting, special though those moments most certainly were – but rather, the smaller moments like walking through an upscale park in Marylebone in the pouring rain or humming to myself and dancing at some obscure, empty tube station. It isn’t the obvious things like our shattered industriousness or, goodness forbid, our dune grass that attract me to Michigan (though I like those things, don’t get me wrong), but more the random, off-beat, “only in Michigan” kinds of things that you don’t really notice you’ve grown accustomed to until somebody looks at you strangely when you mention them.

It was that way in our flat in London; I lived with 7 other women, only two of which were from Michigan and only one of which I spoke to regularly. After a while, I got used to the eye-rolling that my “did you know that Michiganders are the only people who ___” comments elicited from Vicky, but it never really bothered me in the first place. Just having a person who understood, even though she was from the other side of the state, from one of the richest families in one of the richest suburbs – it didn’t matter. She was from my state. She was from home.

Yet, why is it that I even react that way to Michigan-specific things? Why am I so amused when I see the word “Kalamazoo” printed in a nationally or internationally distributed book? What makes me giggle to myself for minutes on end and grin like an idiot when I see “Checker Cab Company” written in a book of short stories about the quirky things Michiganders do? Is it narcissism again? Knowing that I’ve got some sort of intimate knowledge about something others can only imagine? Partially, yes, I’m sure. But I’m sure it also amounts to pride — it’s so satisfying to root for the underdog and then to actually see the underdog win; pride and kite-strings.

It would be interesting to do a massive survey of writers to find out what it is that inspires them or, to use a Ridl-ism, where it is that they write from. I was so intrigued by Ridl’s idea of art as a place, good poetic inspiration as a place, and a hometown as that same genre of place. To extrapolate, it isn’t the location of Michigan that is important to me, not the lakes or the dune grass, but rather the inspiration that is born out of the location; the intangible essence of Michigan about which I know I have to be careful speaking. (I wrote a 20-page critical essay about the intangible elements of Nathanial Hawthorne’s story-writing. There’s only so much one can say about the intangible. I don’t think it got a very good grade.) So maybe that’s going too far. But I still like the idea of Michigan as a Ridl-esque place, a place out of which I write; and a place out of which I cannot help but write, thanks to Oomen’s kite-strings. Perhaps that’s a good definition of a Michigan writer.

So now, I guess, I’ll head off to the library or my back yard or the beach. It doesn’t really matter where I write, or at least, that’s my theory with this project. I’m leaving for France in just over a month and I can only imagine what it will be like to do “the Europe thing” again, to fulfill some of this longing for my life in London. Even if I get worn out about thinking about Michigan all the time, there is no way I’m going to stop these patterns any time soon. If I wasn’t a Michigan writer of sorts before, I most definitely am now, and a change of continent cannot and will not change that. I’ll just have to get a longer string for my kite.

-Michelle

“I am very interested in Detroit, and the post-industrial landscape that is developing there. I spend a good deal of time in the city, and am fascinated by the way people have learned and are learning to live again after the collapse of an industry that shaped the city.”
- Keith Taylor

~

1.

What is lost and what is gained in the shadow of something so vast, so all-encompassing, retreating?

2.

He woke, got dressed, and was walking out the door before he felt the impossible paper in his work pants from the day before.

3.

Who are you besides your 401k, your chair along the line, your clipboard, your screwdriver? How much do you actually want to know?

4.

In the towering shell of Motown’s nest, flown, a child plants a window box as the final snow melts.

~

A friend once drove through Michigan. He drove through Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but he noticed the disbelief most in Michigan. Men in bars, women frozen in the cereal aisle, teenagers lingering aimlessly the streets; so many ghosts left behind in industry’s footprint. Bigfoot Ford has moved along, but we’re still sitting here in his rusty toemarks, ignorant as to what to do with all this time, all this vitality. We may be living amidst rivers that whisper vibrant stories and lakes that shift color with the slightest breath of wind, but we’ve grown too jaded to recognize anything but our own defeat.

~

stemware at 4pm, shiraz, tastes of
cigarettes. calmly tottering out to the patio,
lighter fuel in hand.

each year, a plush bear, each bear
now onto the grill; stuffing vanishing at first light,
plastic eyes reflecting the blaze –

she takes a drink. ignores the sting of February
beneath her pedicured toes (special at Walmart,
$14.99), she adds fuel

to the flame. she thinks about her house,
her cats, her job, her wine – remembers how little
she loved him,
in the end.

~

"but I have some measure of hope"

I read a piece last night about Detroit. About Michigan’s resilience as a state. About Michganders’ abilities to watch a team lose 16-0, become the butt of so many jokes, watch the whole country lose hope and casually dismiss not only the team but the city and her people — and yet we Michiganders know how to take it in stride. We know how to watch the big three turn their backs on us and still walk to the factory and punch our time card the next day. We know how to reinvent ourselves, if sloppily, after our identities have been shattered with those words we know too well: “layoffs” “pink slip” “cutbacks” “outsourcing.” We try, at least, we try even if nobody is watching because that’s just how we do things here.

Reading that article, I couldn’t help but think a woman I met named Kitt Alexander. Her husband, Larry Alexander, is the CEO of the Detroit Convention Bureau; it’s his job to sell the city whose crumbling walls most Michiganders are all too aware of. And I can’t help but think of her blinding optimism; optimism, in the face of being married to the man who has to sell the city that nobody seems to want to love any more, and the same optimism in the face of a strong and beautiful mentally handicapped daughter. Please don’t draw the comparison out too far or take it too literally; that’s not the point — the point is that even though Kitt comes from Chicago, she has acquired the Michigan spirit. She’s not about to give in. She’s not about to give up.

But it’s hard. Reading that article reminds me just how hard it is to live here in these times. I’ve been partially sheltered from the “really bad stuff” because I’ve been away for the past four months. I still haven’t really gotten used to headline after headline bringing more bad news. I sometimes see the faces of Palestinians on TV, looking shocked and terrified that the conflict finally hit home. Again, don’t draw the comparison out too far, but I feel like I see those same faces in the newspaper and on TV when “the crisis” finally makes it onto the paychecks and into the living rooms of these Michiganders who have been living in a war zone of collapsing industry for most of their lives. We live here; we’re no stranger to these words; we were in “crisis” long before it was so popular to be in “crisis”; but it still doesn’t take away an ounce of the hopelessness, shame, and indignity we feel when our number gets called.

And I wonder how far it can go. I wonder how much longer we can rot, how much higher the deficit numbers and the unemployment numbers and the homeless numbers can climb before we reach a real crisis point. Or a riot point. Or an anarchy point. How much farther can the world push these resilient spirits of ours before they won’t push any more? What can the economy and the big three and the blind and deaf industry find to rob from us next? How much can we give? How much can we take?

I’m in a strange position, then, of trying to write about this state in this time, amidst this darkness. I’m a writer by nature and I’m a college senior by chronology; I’m writing about what I know and love; I’m writing about Michigan, tattered though she may be. And I’m writing about what makes people write about her, about here, when both are so thoroughly used. I have a series of answers (the environment, the resilience, the eternally underestimated strength and pull of family ties) but none of them ever seem strong enough. There are loud, logical parts of me that simply can’t justify writing about angels or farm houses or the shores of a northern Michigan river when there’s such turmoil everywhere we look.

And for some reason, that makes me think about Picasso. Picasso wasn’t a typical war painter. He didn’t paint Goya’s gut-wrenching agony or Delacroix’s uniting spirit of revolution; he painted “Guernica,” for which he’s rather well known, but, none the less, doesn’t exactly capture war in a typical manner. But he also painted “Still Life with a Candle.” In 1937, during the Spanish civil war and while the Nazis were steadily gaining power, Picasso painted a still life with a candle, an aloe plant, and a coffee pot. When I discovered this painting, I was struck both by how imposing the coffee pot seemed and the irrelevance of such oppression in light (or in the light) of the candle. It’s not a painting of war, but it’s a painting about war and about what happens to the rest of us while it’s going on.

So maybe these poems are our still life paintings. Just because they aren’t writing directly about the economy and the crisis and industry and the war in the Middle East that we’re all terrified will somehow make it onto our front porches — it doesn’t mean that they aren’t influenced by these things. And it doesn’t mean that they’re ignoring them. But maybe, by the power of some Michigan resilience and hope and optimism, they’ve just chosen to write about the candle and not the coffee pot because really, we hear far far too much about the coffee pot, anyway.

-Michelle

-M

lightling

2007-11-05T16:44:43Z

with the vision of
lightning, I loved you.
flashbulb romance.
simple.

thunder, always your
weapon, rattled my essence;
opaque with anger un-
expressed

flickering storm light,
fumbling love light, we
collided then
dissolved

in the deluge.

-mrs 2.11.2007

thoughts on London's transience

2007-11-02T10:29:13Z

The words only pour when they probably shouldn’t; my meeting looms, responsibility calls. But there’s a quiet desperation with which I feel I must write these lines. They’ll be gone by the time I’ve got a spare minute.

This city morphs into what you want it to be: we only see what we want to see and there’s so much to choose from. Think of a lost lover and there you’ll see his eyes, her hair; battle with a craving and there it will be in his lips, her hands. Its streets are formless, blank, until we imprint them with our thoughts.

I love the little things, details time forgot. The Mansions on Bloomsbury, unwashed since the coal days; the edifice on Titchfield, defiantly anachronistic. The pigeons have watched, cooing softly in that bower, since carriages roamed these streets and Victoria sat the throne.

It’s easy to forget, sometimes, the history dripping from these streets. The greatest minds have walked here; time’s unknown geniuses sat there. Treachery and murder, love too immense for words, all here, all buried under layers of innovation.

And there it flies.

-mrs 26.10.07

a dark little ditty

2007-10-08T13:36:42Z

about vicky's alcoholism. marvelous.

Surrounded by the sentries of addiction, you reach out in bursts, when they’re not looking. Your better half, your former lovers; all alienated at one point by the sentries, still can’t help but grasp your hand in distress. They hate to see you so trapped. The tug of war ensues; you help each side at random. Eventually, you side with your captors, unwilling to fight against them and their pleasures any longer. Those on the outside walk away dejected, only to be hailed down by your pleas again the next time. What will you do when they’ve finally walked away?

-mrs 10.8.07

milking it for what it's worth

2007-09-27T09:52:56Z

so I've been milking every situation I encounter here for every ounce of creative possibility. Naturally, the silly little fling I had over the past week or so is ample opportunity for such creativity. It's not that I've been horribly emotionally involved [if I had been, you wouldn't be seeing this for several months, if not years] but I'm just taking a creative outlook on it all. My writer's prompt book suggested that I write about 'between the lines' and things not said in a recent conversation. So I wrote about our 'breakup,' of sorts. Anyway, I'm justifying far too much to give you this tiny little piece of prose, thus here it is:

Silence, pregnant with stillborn possibility; the end, yet with so much Hope for more beginnings.
'so about last night...' I can't look her in the eye
annoyed silence, a pause, 'yeah'
'it wasn't ok, it was very much not ok and...'
she can't contain the burst of breath, exasperation in audio form, 'yeah, yeah, whatever...'
another silence, another hope, still dying, decaying in the womb, I start again.
'it's just... it really reminded me of him of what I used to be and I just really can't handle something like...'
'you know what? this just isn't going to work -' passion, free of apathy, disappointment, drips from the angry words, 'I am who I am - this is a part of me and if you can't accept that...'
reeling, relieved, 'yeah. I agree.'
at her receding back I stare a series of rebuttals, all denying my insensitivity, clarifying the parameters of our mismatch. but a single, elated spirit holds my tongue, morphs my lips into a smile and sings, 'free! you're free!' and the weight in my gut is lifted.

-mrs 27 september 2007

and here is my page from a few days ago - back when I still wasn't actually going to kiss her. the first one is with the prompt of talking about light. so here it is:

fall has fallen in london, blue skies replaced by gray - sunshine by a weak watery blanket akin to fluorescence: god's dormitory of the autumn. still, the city lies vibrant - more comfortable now that she's back in her proper element. the always-stoic faces of her people seem to carry an 'I-told-you-so' just below the surface. sunlight has its positive effects, but they're much too wise to think it would last. they don't much care for the gloom, but at least it's familiar. a happy return to an old lover, abusive though she may be.

take something you know: the relief, the joy of saying 'yes' when it's so much harder to say 'no'. change it into something you don't: the sneaking, sinking resignation of saying ;no; as you should. the tears that follow, the fear of having chosen wrong... but the glow of the next morning, unfamiliar and slowly rising from the ashes of your smoldering disappointment. the pride the next day and the gravity, the next of your ability to choose; even if the alternative is something from which, before, you would have run - you can choose to sit and take it. relish in it, grow from it.

I knew long ago that you stood as a deviation - the fallen log in my stream forcing me to separate from my former self and flow in a new direction. what I didn't realize is that such a deviation doesn't come from loving you, dancing with you, kissing you - but from the lack of all three and then some. through you, I've learned to say no - you who could never do so yourself. it's sad, the irony of ny new-found ability; but if you learn from me as I have from you, then maybe, just maybe, we can both make yet another deviation into something even better yet.

the absence of a kiss lends me to the contemplation of my hunger. allows me to ruminate over my loss, gives me a chance to imagine the places I haven't been. beds I haven't shared. the absence of a kiss takes me to a world of desolate beauty: self-love, through circumstance, overcoming the hunger for others.

on the precipice of an ended fast, I cannot help but look down, feel dizzy, step back. much too grand, I've imagined such a moment; hours and days spent envisioning such a release. I know no end could possibly measure up, but hunger has made me wise - I'll no longer accept nourishment blindly.

-mrs 20 september 2007

oh what a long time it's been

2007-09-10T21:16:10Z

these aren't much and they're certainly not edited, but I'm just glad that I wrote something... and it sheds some light for those of you who haven't heard about my current erm... situation with one of my roommates =) don't read too much into it, though - I took quite a bit of artistic license!

I'm a writer. No harm in giving me time to write. Perhaps, it's a blessing. A do-nothing job, a phone booth for my transformation not into a spandex clad superhero, but into not-posh-enough work clothes - to better facilitate my ability to let the rest of my existence pour from the tip of my pen.
The city lends itself so perfectly to anonymity. Humans dressed in Superman scowls, backpacks, briefcases. Disguising themselves for a living, shuffling reality to the back burner - dipped into and tasted at the occasional company gala or happy hour at the pub. Neglecting children and lovers, escaping on holiday annually to pour six figure salaries into a slowing atrophying Clark Kent.
I'm hanging on, though. Keeping my eye on the girl outside the phonebooth who follows me even after I've assumed my super (alter) ego. She can tell it's really me - she sees how little like a superhero I really am. She doesn't blame me; she knows what it means to be constantly changing: chameleons unable to settle. Still she keeps my attention. Because even though I know she forgives me, I'm dying to see how she flies.

Start with something you know: there's no limit to the intrigue created by a human pursuing another. Move to something you don't: the delusion which leads us, despite all logic, to reciprocate even the least likely, least healthy of the potential partnerships. Each pursuit is a tiny death, leading us all momentarily to the gates of heaven. Those rare, pure matches are allowed to pass through pearly cloudstuff; at least until snoring and grocery lists expel them back to where they started. The fortunate go straight to hell, suffering momentary disappointment in exchange for the eternal fiery certainty that it really can't get any worse. But the rest, the sad majority, must endure the purgatory of pursuit - having peeped enough of heaven to ignore all downward descent. We imagine all heavenly pastimes, revel in the imagined solicitude of of heavenly domesticity. Despite being pulled, always, downward and losing the memory of heaven by the second, we strive to be the exception to the earth-bound rule.

But I still remember her kisses, her confirmation, still remember the thrill of feeling as though I'd beaten the system; discovered a trapdoor along the one-way tunnel to penitentiary marriage. No more am I headed inexorably towards abuse and babies; yet my eyes are so used to the darkness, her kiss stuns me out of movement. I'm still dancing, but the music has disappeared and my closed eyes are being blinded with her light.

Brushing aside adult responsibility and emotions under the laissez-faire policy of sex, drugs and alcohol - she is a child. Yet like a naughty 6-year-old she breaks her own rules: loving, feeling, caring. She carries responsibilities and nurses lovers to life but, remembering her role, spills them like so many glasses of milk. She's innocent as long as she remains unaware, stays on the outside of her station. The only way for her to ever actually grow is to never realize she's been an adult all along.

But I still remember her kiss. Eyes closed, dancing, she surprised me. Through the sweat and the bodies she reached me, held me, reminded me that I'm capable of escaping the freight train that is my future. Of course I've been shipped to Siberia but goods always get lost along the way. She is my wayward traveler, vagabond looking for sustenance. And I'm willing, so very willing to get lost along the way.

She is my wayward traveler, vagabond looking for sustenance. Hungrily, she kisses me and I dissolve into her lips. Moving as one, we forget expectations, filling the other's voids with remnants of our former selves. Ignorant of our sacrifice, we thrive even while apart. But in the instant of collision, all incompletion is remembered and we exist fully, wholly, for one another.

-mrs 10 September 2007

glow

2007-06-30T05:01:36Z

moonlight dances on up-
turned arms through safety
glass, gone steamy, with our
presence. Love is the space filled
by warm sour milk in the
niche I've grown between my gut
and my Heartbeat. dim-bulbed flash
lights in deep-dug tunnels wavering
gently, three hours down the road; still
moonlight dances on the voids in
my labyrinth, I glow with the
light that you loan me.

-mrs 6.29.07

[it's been a while]

shaven

2007-04-03T04:25:37Z

the rainbow encircled moon drifts
among dark (rain-heavy?) clouds
casting a dull shadow on my cold,
shaven head. if but for the wind,
I would not notice its nakedness; if but
for the clouds, I would not notice her beauty.

-mrs 3.2.04

From Thanatopsis - William Cullen Bryant

2007-03-18T16:13:07Z

"So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no firend
Take not of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their silent mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeoun, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

-William Cullen Bryant

dog days of winter

2007-02-19T03:15:10Z

the clear nights are the coldest
when each breath feels like
a thousand icicle darts, and you’re
forced to cough to release them
again. the sun sets
spectacularly and you’re reminded
of dog days long gone, and still
far away. the moon rises and her
crescent of a half-smile lets you know
she sees you, she remembers you,
and you’re gonna make it until
the dog days settle back in.

-mrs 2.18.2007

[inspired by something tim said today and written walking back from the library]

between

2007-02-12T01:23:22Z

so I have two versions of this poem. same words, different arrangements. if you please, let me know which one you prefer.

version 1: prose

the unmistakable sizzle of the space between tracks on the vinyl twice our age echoes in the gap between our words. our fingers dance anyway, creating their own rhythms, syncopated by the pops and snaps, issuing through my father’s device. and maybe it’s wrong to be so comfortable with you; perhaps I’m only hurting myself more by indulging in the peace I find on those rare occurrences when our fingers do the dancing and our minds do the talking and we’re content just to be together between our absences.

version 2: "classic" lined poem

the unmistakable sizzle
of the space between tracks
on the vinyl twice our age
echoes in the gap
between our words. our
fingers dance anyway,
creating their own rhythms,
syncopated by the pops and
snaps, issuing through my father’s
device.
and maybe it’s wrong to be
so comfortable with you; perhaps
I’m only hurting myself more by
indulging in the peace I find
on those rare occurrences when
our fingers do the dancing and our
minds do the talking and we’re
content just to be together
between our absences.

-mrs 2.11.2007

View Poll: preference

change

2006-12-14T19:10:24Z

it’s funny, the feeling
that I’ve got a life to
spend on someone, something
somewhere
like the left over quarters and dimes
from the coffee
I bought for you; jangling
in my pocket : a reminder of
what’s left –
three years is a long time,
but I’ve still got eighty-two
cents.

-mrs 12.14.2006

advent litany

2006-12-12T03:07:17Z

crumpled boot-top slouches
over wobbley heal, on ice
clip-clop towards the red-painted
door. wrinkled hand reaches towards
cold brass doorknob, clip-clop
takes the same seat as last week.
blue paper on lap, sits stands reads
sits reads stands reads sings
adds one more patch to the
thick quilt of hundreds, now
blissfully numb, grown tired of asking
why.

-mrs 12.11.2006

James Baldwin is a Genius.

2006-11-09T03:18:40Z

So I haven't been writing anything of my own lately, but I'm currently rolling joyfull in the gold that is Giovanni's Room. It's better than the first time, I swear.

I have thought about Jacques' question since. The question is banal but one of the real troubles with living is that living in so banal. Everyone, after all, goes the same dark road-- and the road has a trick of being most dark, most treacherous, when it seems most bright-- and it's true that nobody stays in the garden of Eden. Jacques' garden was not the same as Giovanni's, of course. Jacques' garden was involved with football players and Giovanni's was involved with maidens-- but that seems to have made so little difference. Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember , it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.

mmm poetry in prose. I'm excited for my books next semester. Who's a litdork? oh yeah... me.

elegy for a bit of purple string.

2006-09-17T17:43:58Z

elegy for a bit of purple string.

once upon a time,
I found you, curled up
near a purple skein,
(fabric store homes for
future memories),
I put you in my
pocket.

that night he told me,
while we were walking
he might be in love
with me – my heart stopped.
my feet soon followed,
hands in my pocket,
I felt you sitting
there.

pulling you out, I
moved my wrist towards him,
covered already,
each strand a story,
silently, he saw
what I wanted, he
tied you on with three
knots.

months passed, time tends to
fly when you’re having
fun – love or not they
flew. tossing and turn-
ing, rolling and twist-
ing, “love” took us for
a ride.

still you endured, though
sometimes you’d mix in,
wrapping around last
summer. one night I
found you, twisted ‘round
our first kiss, and all
I could do was smile.

but time has a way
of passing too quick-
ly. separation
takes its toll. even
the strongest of bonds
will break, like ours did:
your fibers wore thin.

in the end it was
anticlimactic
trying to straighten
you and your fellows,
I noticed a piece of
you apart from the
rest gentle tug and
you lied once more in
my hands.

I put you in my
memory box, near
ticket stubs and dried
flower petals, you
blend right in with the
scenery of time
long gone: now I know
I’ll never forget
~~him~~ you.

-mrs 9.17.2006

[author's note: it's so awkward because it has to be "in form" so I wrote with the same # of syllables in each line. I fully intend on "revising" it for my portfolio and putting in linebreaks that actually work.]

this is what happens when I think too much about form

2006-09-15T04:54:55Z

I create my own form. Something like a seriously weird villainelle in seriously weird format. if only I could get the syllables in the second stanza to line up better, I'd be tempted to be proud of it. Nevertheless, here it is:

so untitled.

take me to the
banks of mystery
bring me where your
inspiration blooms
fly me to the
place where beauty grows

simple, pure, lovely poem

inspiration: banks of blooms
fly to where purity grows
take my place of lovely mystery
bring beauty to the simple poem

-mrs 9.14.2006

beautiful

2006-09-13T18:20:32Z

the rain has lost
its romaticism so
I'm left cold
and wet
and waiting for you
again.
to come and hold
me, dry
my tears and tell
me it's gonna be
OK. the
drip, drop, drooping
of my red and puffy
eyelids, fall
down and succumb
to sleep.

click of the lock,
flip of the lights
you're home,
the nightmare of this night
is over, safe
once more in your arms:
the rain
is suddenly
beautiful.

-mrs 9.13.06

[writer's note: I have no clue where this came from and it's not my favorite - but it's the thought that counts =) ]

shade.

2006-04-24T03:29:22Z

shade.

summer light blinds the gardener as she
bends to tend her lilies,
carefully snipping shriveled leaves, she
admires their bright heads:
all tilted, in unison, towards
their father -- brilliant sun

in the corner of the plot, next to
the railroad ties which separate the garden
from the yard
the gardener frowns, as she lifts the wilted head
of the lily in the shade

“I’ve given you everything,” she whispers --
“all you have to do is try.”
but it can’t, it won’t
lean with the others towards
the all-replenishing sun.

“your life, my dear, is far too short
to deny yourself
the things which you desire.”

-mrs 4.23.06

Detroit Annie, Hitchhiking by Judy Grahn

2006-04-04T02:53:23Z

Her words pour out as if her throat were a broken
artery and her mind were cut-glass, carelessly handled.
You imagine her in a huge velvet hat with great
dangling black feathers,
but she shaves her head instead
and goes for three-day midnight walks.
Sometimes she goes down to the dock and dances
off the end of it, simply to prove her belief
that people who cannot walk on water
are phonies, or dead.
When she is cruel, she is very, very
cool and when she is kind she is lavish.
Fisherman think perhaps she's a fish, but they're all
fools. She figured out that the only way
to keep from being frozen was to
stay in motion, and long ago converted
most of her flesh into liquid. Now when she
smells danger, she spills herself all over,
like gasoline, and lights it.
She leaves the taste of salt and iron
under your tongue, but you dont mind
The common woman is as common
as the reddest wine

-Judy Grahn

click here to hear ms. ani d read it. beautiful, I swear...

-M

musings...

2006-03-27T20:31:49Z

There's probably a poem in here somewhere...

I enjoy relishing in the simplicity of words. Letters to form words arranged in a specific order – from which empires are built, hearts are broken, and dreams are made and shattered. Nothing beats soaking in the early spring sunshine, novel in hand, and endless images and questions running through your head. To then imagine all the other thousands of people who have done the same thing in the same spot – or read the same book in thousands of other spots is mind blowing. To imagine how completely different this same combination of these same 26 letters can be to any given person makes my head spin. All the emotions words have created in over the years (from the thrill and rush of adventure to the deepest throws of depression and up to the soaring heights of certain love) are unique, though that which inspired them is about as far from unique as it gets. So many thousands of people will only ever use a single alphabet in their lifetime. The average intelligent person has use of only 20,000 some words. It seems like a lot, but when you consider the innumerable emotions that these 20,000 words can create if harnessed correctly, it seems simplistic. And so I can only sit back, take a deep breath, and admire.

-MRS 3.27.06

For Class...

2006-03-14T04:14:14Z

this is odd... it's not my normal style [obviously] because it has to be a modernist/imagist poem... I kinda like it, but it's kinda weird... sorta beat-like...

the anticipatory ripples of front-clashing energy:
a storm is approaching

~

flash, rumble, gust:
the sky is dancing in the street

~

the cat’s back is arched against
the enthusiasm of the clouds

~

a downpour strips tears of their identity
angst-ridden salt lost to the baptism of the storm

~

the mist from the sky cools
the anger in the heart

~

the pitter patter of nature’s tears,
her humanity lulls me to sleep

~

a dirty puddle is all that remains
nature’s collapse was all too quick

-MRS 3.13.06

JSF

2006-03-03T02:23:23Z

Jonathan Safran Foer is Cool. Click here to read one of his short stories. it requires a subscription, but the story is so worth it. Go ahead. I dare ya.

-M

Catherine

2006-02-28T00:40:51Z

oh Catherine
I see myself in you, I do
you never wanted this kind of life -
never wanted to be following in your
daddy's footsteps
drinking until you forget that this
isn't who you are
drinking until you forget that your
shoes don't fit that your
smile is all fake that your
friends don't actually care
oh Catherine
I see my fear in your pale sad eyes
see the
remnants of my tears on your
perfectly pink cheeks
see my
desperation to find myself in your
desperate search through
someone else’s closet to find
the perfect outfit.
to please the boy who's not like your daddy
who wasn't supposed to be like your daddy
but who, more often than not, is
just
like
your
daddy.
and then what are you supposed to do, Catherine?
you tried...

eek! that's scary! writing without boundaries... ooh girl. try it, I dare you, it's weird!

-M

addictive

2006-02-16T01:57:58Z

sitting here I’m smoking,
trying to calm the nerves that you’ve
gotten so good at getting on these days,
these weeks, these months --
when will it end, will it end, will it be soon?
gray world surrounds me:
barren trees, barren skies,
sounds of industry and happy voices
passing me by.
gray of sky gives way to gray of snow,
gray of snow to gray of street,
and back to the selfsame gray,
gray, sky.
I exhale and for a second, the smoke clouds my eyes;
I hardly notice the difference when it clears.

bright green shirt approaches
it’s owner catches my eye
sees too much, then smiles:
“got a light?”
I hand over my device:
(the cheapest Bic, green, my third)
I never meant to keep this habit.
never meant to be addicted to
relieving myself of you.
leaning against the wall, we both lose ourselves
in thought. green shirt or green grass,
the smoke blurs it all again.
and I’m back, those long months ago,
that short summer.

no frozen wall but lush, live grass
tickles my neck,
the scent of summer, thick
in the water-heavy air.
clouds creep lazily: a rabbit here,
an angel there, I glance over
and then, there’s you.

you smile at me, inch closer, slowly nuzzle in,
the hinge of your lap perfectly frames my hip,
all the while laughing, pointing out our favorites
so much possibility, such vibrant lives we’re leading;
just the beginning
it’s just the beginning, we think…

a cough from my companion and I’m forced
back to reality, cold wall, cold hands,
gripping cigarette.
sucking in the toxins, I imagine what you’d say
if you saw me sitting here
if you smelled it on my clothes
but hey, what else is distance for,
than hiding?

boot crushes butt, my companion leaves me
with a wave. I take a final drag on mine
and put it out.
all that’s left now is the nicotine
coursing through my blood,
giving way, too soon now
to the craving for another,
the craving for another…
addiction is my existence
these days.

-MRS 2.15.06

[writer's note: no, I don't smoke, don't worry. it was just an intriguing idea. this is for my poetry class, but I don't know if she's gonna let me use it. it's supposed to be a romantic era ode, but the problem isn't exactly resolved. and there's no meter. oops.]

sonnets la la la and song lyrics

2006-01-26T21:47:05Z

Joy Sonnet in a Random Universe

Sometimes I'm happy: la la la la la la la
la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
la la la la . Tum tum ti tum. La la la la la la
la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la.
Hey nonny nonny. La la la la la la la la la
la la la la la la la la la la la . Vo do di o do.
Poo poo pi doo. La la la la la la la la la la
la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
la la. Whack a doo. La la la la la la la . Sh-
boom, sh-boom. La la la la la la la la la la
la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
la la. Dum di dum. La la la la la la la la la
la la la la la la la la la . Ta la la. Tra la la
la la la la la la la la la la . Yeah yeah yeah.

-Helen Chasin

Sonnet

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to lauch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and hearatche will find and end,
where Laura well tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, adn come at last to bed.

-Billy Collins

i'll be your biggest fan
i will be your fool
i'll be your exception
to whatever the rule
and i ain't the type to bitch
i ain't the type to cry
i'll sit at your red light and wait
for your shit to go by
and this vague little smile
is my all-purpose expression
the meaning of which
i will leave to your discretion

my distraction's my defense
against a lack of inspiration
against a slow leak deflation
the further the horizon
the more it holds my gaze
and the foreground's out of focus
but you know i kinda hope it's
just a phase

i've been through and through this
i know just how it goes
you'll have no idea
you'll have no need to know
cuz i will make your body
grow wings and take flight
i will erase sound
i will erase light
and this vague little smile
is my all-purpose expression
the meaning of which
i'll leave to your discretion

my distraction's my defense
against a lack of inspiration
against a slow leak deflation
the further the horizon
the more it holds my gaze
and the foreground's out of focus
but you know i kinda hope it's
just a phase

-The Ani song of the day