Poetry Arrived In Search of Me

Sure. Have another Maker's, Kasey.

2006-05-09T23:09:00.000-07:00

This has nothing to do with poetry, but perhaps the one and a half people who actually read this will pardon my departure from the established form.

I just spent an hour pounding on my keyboard about how tired I am of people in general, ranting about humans using one another like paper plates, and screaming about how it's always the best people who end up damaged and hurt. I deleted it, because it is a ridiculously cliched sentiment, and I had nothing interesting or new to add. No amount of writing will help decent people get everything they deserve or make the assholes change. All I can do is continue to judge people by intentions, not by actions, because even the best ones fuck up, and even the worst can somehow end up smelling like roses every single time they screw someone over.

Excuse me. This doesn't make any sense, I know. But I'm just tired. Tired of smiles being used as masks, and of walls and of the necessity of walls. Tired of defending the people I care about from people who can see no further than their own wants. I'm physically and emotionally beat down, and not in the mood to deal with the fake niceties that we pass off as conversation when real things are waiting to be said. But sadly, they'll continue to wait.

In other news, while the aforementioned one and a half people are already in the pardoning mood, I will now ask that you forgive my short attention span. I spent hours last week sitting in the middle of the poetry section of Powells, and as my leg was falling painfully asleep, I realized that I was reading verse again, which was the whole point of my little corner of the internet. I'm just not interested in making my half assed analyses public anymore. When I've lost interest and no one else had any to begin with, it's an easy end. So poetry, I do believe, has arrived for the last time here.

Except: Hey, you. Yeah, you. If you feel like emailing me, please do. The address is right there on the side of the screen. I was younger then, and thought I was making some point. I didn't take in account both of our stubbornness. So yeah, just say hi. And tell me how you're doing.

Buzzworthy

2006-03-25T16:23:00.000-08:00

Reading

And there I was again,
Sound, soft,
Pressing with headlights into
A conversation with someone
With whom I did not want to have
A conversation.

“do you like to read?” she asked.

Before I answered, I tried
To imagine
What literary works had already
Polluted her pointed question,
And,
Before I answered, I imagined
Why she had read such garbage.

I imagined her self-help books
In a heap by her bed,
And wondered if she had taken the time
To actually finish one.

Namely, the one I imagined
sitting closest to her pillow,
entitled Your Attention Span and You.
Through which she’d only gotten
About halfway.

I tried to imagine if she read in
The bathroom,
As I did, and do,
Since it makes for such
Quiet concentration;

(I decided that no,
she didn’t. She thought it uncouth. )

She was still gazing,
Waiting
For an answer to her absurd inquiry,
But I was stuck on imagining
The bejeweled bookmarks
She would make for herself instead of reading
The books to put them in.

After I felt my silence had suitably tortured her, I
Cleared my throat and
Relayed her question,
And said, “no.”

As I had suspected,
She began to ramble
And recite a long list of
Names she had memorized,
None of whom I had heard before.
I was going to ask in what part of the
Self-help section I could find these masterpieces,
But instead, let her continue to talk.

She played with her pinky fingernail
As she spoke.

I lost track after the
Explanation of
The third author’s lifestory,
And began to envision her
Messy kitchen, that
Held a
very expensive food processing unit
that was sure to please
any company that would behold it.

Her final inquisition was
What had snapped me back
To attention.
She had written down one of the
Author’s names for
Me to research later.

I did, when I got home;
I looked him up
And browsed his published works,
One,
Eerily titled,
a deeper look into attention span.

I ordered a copy; it arrived
Last month. I have yet to start
Reading.

-

Just found this one again. I rememeber my delight when I first read it, and like the best poetry, I love it even more upon this second look.

It Takes a While to Disappear

2006-03-22T16:27:00.000-08:00

You are the Place You Cannot Move

You wake up healthy
but you don't feel right. Now everything's
backwards and you're thinking of someone to blame.

And you do, you're lucky,
drinking coffee was easy, the traffic's
moving along, you're like
everyone else just trying to get through the day
and the place you're dreaming of seems possible—
somewhere to get to.

All you really know
is that it hurts here, the way feelings
are bigger than we are, and a woman's face
in a third-story window, her limp hair
and the pots of red geraniums luring you
into her suffering until you're walking on roads
inscribed in your own body. The maps
you never speak of. Intersections, train stations,
roadside benches, the names of places and
people you've known all bearing the weight
of cashing a check or your having to eat something,
of glimpsing the newspaper's ghoulish headlines.

Like everyone else, you think,
the struggle is toward a better time, though
no pressure surrounds the house you were born in.
Cool, quieter, a vast primitive light
where nothing happens but the sound
of your sole self breathing.
And you've decisions to make. Isn't that why
you've come? with a bald-headed man at the bar
and your friends all over the place, anxious,
tired, a little less sturdy than you'd hoped for
and needing someone to kick around, someone to love.

-Ralph Angel

Just found Mr. Angel recently, and I kinda want to be his someone to kick around. But I'll settle for just reading everything of his that I can my get my grubby little paws on. Yay, I say. Yayness squared.

Casida of the Reclining Woman

2006-03-22T02:00:00.000-08:00

Ditty of First Desire

In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
A heart.

And in the ripe evening
I wanted to be a nightingale.
A nightingale.

(Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.)

In the vivid morning
I wanted to be myself.
A heart.

And at the evening's end
I wanted to be my voice.
A nightingale.

Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.

-Federico García Lorca

Around these parts I'm known as something of a female Don Juan. My stunning good looks and winning demeanor combine to create a force that no man can deny. That is, almost no man.

The chef where I work is improbably attractive, and I make it my job to tell him this everyday. I use such openings as, "She said her gnocchi wasn't hot...but you sure are," and "The consolidated system reports didn't get faxed last night....in other news, I want to touch your no-no spots." Do you see my clever wordplay? The undeniable brilliance that turns each come-on into beautiful soliloquies of desire?

Just last week, while battling a nasty cold, I took a moment between nose blows, looked at him, and said, "You know, we could go into the walk in and have snotty, phlegmy sex right now." And while taking inventory, I mentioned that we were short a bottle of Grey Goose, but "looking at your pants, I think you probably shoved it down there. I think we might have to strip search you." Reader, I know it's nearly impossible to comprehend, but to date he has not taken me up on ONE of my offers. I don't know if it's his super-hot, wonderful girlfriend or a hidden desire for penis, but I am simply baffled.

Any advice?

Beneath the Waves

2006-03-08T20:50:00.000-08:00

She Considers the Dimensions of Her Soul

The shape of her soul is a square.
She knows this to be the case
because she often feels its corners
pressing sharp against the bone
just under her shoulder blades
and across the wings of her hips.
At one time, when she was younger,
she had hoped that it might be a cube,
but the years have worked to dispel
this illusion of space, so that now
she understands: it is a simple plane,
a shape with surface, but no volume--
a window without a building, an eye
without a mind.
Of course, this square
does not appear on x-rays, and often,
weeks may pass when she forgets
that it exists. When she does think
to consider its purpose in her life,
she can say only that it aches with
a single mystery, for whose answer
she has long ago given up the search--
since its question is a word whose name
can never quite be asked. This yearning,
she has concluded, is the only function
of the square, repeated again and again
in each of its four matching angles,
until, with time, she is persuaded
anew that what it frames has no
interest in ever making her happy.

-Young Smith

Song

2006-03-02T01:55:00.000-08:00

Suite (For Hoku)

A poem is a room that contains
the house it’s in, the way you
accommodate me when I lie
beside you, even if the address
is lost so many times and the names
of streets are strangers that pass
shuffling a card-deck of maps
whose rubber band has snapped:
still beyond all chance or choice
perhaps, your arms fold mine
to indicate location, the close
custom of place held together
or flung into the bedroom’s air
where your dress tries to come in
from the rain it has become:
the way shelter finds us one again,
and the opus of this nearness,
the poem on its own, wandering.

-Bill Knott

Is it too early to have spring fever? Because I'm afraid this malady has befallen me, and I don't see relief any time soon.

Schmaltz

2006-02-23T02:35:00.000-08:00

I confess

I stalked her
in the grocery store: her crown
of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip,
her erect bearing, radiating tenderness,
the way she placed yogurt and avocados in her basket,
beaming peace like the North Star.
I wanted to ask, "what aisle did you find
your serenity in, do you know how
to be married for 50 years, or how to live alone,
excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to possess
some knowledge that makes the earth burn and turn on its axis"
but we don't request such things from strangers
nowadays. So I said, "I love your hair."

-Alison Luterman

Portland is a pretty remarkable city in a million ways, but one of them is fact that it so very literate. Each year, they run a program called "Everybody Reads," where they basically give away thousand of brand new books, just to get everyone on the same page (get it?!). And while riding the bus, if you've forgotten your latest His Dark Materials book (yeah, I'm reading a children's series...what of it, bitch?) you can read and consider beautiful little poems posted all around you.

This was one of the poems I encountered one day, and it made me laugh, because I had had the exact same experience a few weeks before. I was out, enjoying some coffee and just generally enjoying a lazy Sunday morning, when a women sat right outside the window I was sitting inside of. She was was, in a word, stunning. She had the kind of beauty that leads you made assumptions about her morality. That peaches and cream complexion? A reflection of her pure soul. The out of control curls that don't have an ounce of frizz to them? Her personality in hair form; bouncy and fun without a hint of insecurity to mar her sparkling demeanor. And of course her clear blue eyes were framed by impossibly long lashes, and each smile (of which there seemed to be an unending supply of) was punctuated by the deepest dimples humanly possible.

I wanted to talk to her, tell her that I was in love with her and would give up men (I probably wouldn't bother mentioning that they'd already given up on me) in a second if only for fifteen minutes of her time. I wanted to know what made her life so perfect, and become a part of her blessed existence. I must have stared at her for a half hour with slack jaw and dumb look, just infatuated with this perfect specimen. Of course, I couldn't help but making comparisons. I was in my tattered and stained men's hoddie, jeans that hadn't seen a washing machine in a week, my mascara from the night before lay smudged underneath my eyes, and my indecently long hair was pulled into a messy knot that sat askew on top of my head.

As I stared, however, I started to notice little things. Like, was that freshly applied mascara on her lashes? It was! That porcelain complexion...could that be blush on her cheeks? I also began to suspect that her hair probably adhered to laws of physics, and to keep it from being a giant fro in perpetually rainy Portland, she had to be rocking a crap load of product in those curls. This girl was full on made up at 8:30 am on a Sunday! Who has the time and motivation for that? And as she continued reading her book, my visions of her life changed. I had imagined her waking up, dewy and fresh, walking over to her window and throwing open her drapes to reveal a sunny morning each and every day, taking a deep breath in, and then beginning her perfect day. Now, I knew she woke up at 7am even on Sunday, showered, took an hour with a diffuser while fretting over the humid day and how it would ruin her coif, blotted concealer on her tiny blemishes, and plucked her eyebrows into tiny arches to emphasize the MAC eyeshadow she spent 15 bucks on last week. On an early Sunday morning. Just so she could sit outside and read.

Suddenly I didn't want to ask her about the mysteries of life, or pledge my eternal love (I would've still made out with her, though.) Just the thought of what it took to make this magnificent creature so magnificent wore me out. It wasn't the first time I've mistaken physical perfection for other kinds of integrity. But strangely, I only this do with women. I think it has to do with how I perceive my own shortcomings, physically and otherwise. But I also think women are guilty of this far more men: when men see someone they think is beautiful, their first thought is how to have sex with them. It's purely physical. Women tend to go to the other end, the immediate emotional attachment.

Anyway, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that, had the woman approached the goddess in the grocery store, she probably would have found out that she's a scientoligist or a strict, preachy vegan or even one of those people who doesn't have a TV because they think they're so above it. Her beautiful braids are probably just what she does when she hasn't washed her hair, and her air of peace might have had something to do with the Xanax she swallowed before braving the Saturday afternoon hoards at her local Whole Foods.

(And by the way, "I love your hair" is exactly what I ended up saying to my girl on my way out of the coffee shop. And as she graced me with her dimpled smile, suddenly I didn't care how much makeup and product she needed to look so great.)

Just keep quiet and nobody will notice

2005-12-16T00:29:00.000-08:00

A Drink With Something In It

There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth--
I think that perhaps it's the gin.

-Ogden Nash

I attended a thrilling, five and a half hour alcohol class for my job the other day. Truly the highlight of my week, especially when my fellow classmates (who obviously have no one to talk to in their real lives) took up hours relating pointless stories that managed to prolong the agony of this truly awful experience.

I started off with a bad attitude, I must admit. I thought that nothing worthwhile could come of me listening to things I already knew while paying the State of Oregon to do it. How very wrong I was. We were actually provided with this handy dandy chart (almost identical to the chart at right), used in aiding us in identifying "visibly intoxicated people."

As I skimmed the list, I found something quite disconcerting. "Loud speech." Hmm. "Bravado." "Overly animated or entertaining." Umm..."Boisterous." "Overly friendly." It seemed that the very first five signs described yours truly on a day to day basis. Upon further examination, it seems that of the fifty signs, I show no less than 26 every. single. day. Things like, "inappropriate comments," "clumsy, uncoordinated" and "mussed hair" are some of my most defining characteristics. And according to my instructor, anyone showing more than a couple of these signs is clearly inebriated.

Evidently, my clumsiness and overbearing personality are not character flaws! It seems that I am drunk on a continual basis. Now, I'm not quite sure how this has been happening, since lately I have been somewhat modest in my habits, but I am not ruling out the possibility that I might be the second coming of the lord, and have been changing my water and diet cokes to wine inadvertently.

It's somewhat eye opening to realize that your worst suspicions about yourself are true. We've all had those nights where, due to some sweet, potent nectar, we say too much, knock something large over or stick our massive, wide feet in our mouths. Now I want you to imagine doing that on a continual basis, and you might have an inkling of what my life is like. At least I know that I would be a fantastic alcoholic. No one would notice any difference.

Good times.

Night Music

2005-12-02T23:45:00.000-08:00

Love Songs in Age

She kept her songs, they kept so little space,
The covers pleased her:
One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
One marked in circles by a vase of water,
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her,

And coloured, by her daughter -
So they had waited, till, in widowhood
She found them, looking for something else, and stood

Relearning how each frank submissive chord
Had ushered in
Word after sprawling hyphenated word,
And the unfailing sense of being young
Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein
That hidden freshness sung,
That certainty of time laid up in store
As when she played them first. But, even more,

The glare of that much-mentionned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.

-Philip Larkin

I will never be the hipster music snob that I so aspired to be in high school. I will never be the one you go to for the newest, indie-est bands and sounds. I will never be the one who the cool music store guys nod conspiratorially at, knowing that you two belong to a secret society that others can only gawk and wonder at. I, unlike all of those kids, would always eschew Radiohead for REM, will wax nostalgic at Indigo Girls songs, and have to hide my mopey emo albums when friends come by.

After many years of wrestling with my musical taste shortcomings, I have finally come to terms with the fact that I am an emotional ninny when it comes to music. It's almost as if means too much to me to care about the musical competency of whoever is behind it. The combination of a unique voice and a poetic turn of phrase will get me every time.

I am such a boy about most things in life; only my closest friends know when something has upset me, and sometimes I don't even confide in them. Yet something about The Magnetic Fields' "The Book of Love" brings tears to my eyes up every time I hear it. I will also spend hours listening to one song over and over like a love-sick twelve year old, and it's usually something that I've already loved for years. My reaction to music is completely visceral and one of the only facets in my life where I don't feel I have to edit my emotions. Anything that has the power to make me foget to intellectualize every feeling is powerful stuff indeed.

Philip Larkin has been one of my favorite poets for years now, and when I found this, it blew me away. It’s one of those small miracles that we read poetry for. I would love to go into all the subtleties that he offers up, or how I think music and love are really two sides of the same coin, but that's boring and not nearly as nice as reading this poem over a fifth time. By the way, one of my favorite phrases of all time, "stubbly with goodness" comes from Mr. Larkin. Yay for him, and yay for Damien Rice's "Cold Water" which has been playing on repeat for longer than is humanly possible.

Operation Memory

2005-11-18T23:36:00.000-08:00

April 19

We have too much exhibitionism
and not enough voyeurism
in poetry we have plenty of bass
and not enough treble, more amber
beer than the frat boys can drink but
less red wine than meets the lip
in this beaker of the best Bordeaux,
too much thesis, too little antithesis
and way too much New York Times
in poetry we've had too much isolationism
and too few foreign entanglements
we need more Baudelaire on the quai
d'Anjou more olive trees and umbrella pines
fewer leafless branches on the rue Auguste Comte
too much sociology not enough Garcia Lorca
more colons and dashes fewer commas
less love based on narrow self-interest
more lust based on a feast of kisses
too many novels too few poems
too many poets not enough poetry

-David Lehman

Be a voyeur. This is one of the best things I have seen in a very, very long time. Well, other than the plans for Scrooge McDuck's vault/my future residence, but that's really a discussion for another time.

Seeing for a Moment

2005-11-16T22:22:00.000-08:00

The Secret

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

-Denise Levertov

Mmmmm. Yummy sounds. A good writer knows when to quit, and there's not much more I can add to this tonight.

I'm off to discover the secret of life all over again.

The Warning

2005-11-15T22:38:00.000-08:00

The Conspiracy

You send me your poems,
I'll send you mine.

Things tend to awaken
even through random communication

Let us suddenly
proclaim spring. And jeer

at the others,
all the others.

I will send a picture too
if you will send me one of you.

-Robert Creeley

The internet is fun. I use it to keep in touch daily with old friends who live far, far away, to research everything under the moon, and recently, though a series of strange circumstances, have made a great friend or two. In real life, I am somewhat intimidating to those who don't know me well, (as evidenced by a friend's finace's declaration, "You don't scare me anymore, you know,") and that can be magnified when left unattended at a computer.

Let's look at a couple IM conversations:

(as I look at an online wedding photo album):
Kasey Version2K4 :ps, I kinda want to make out with the bridesmaid with bangs.
Recently Married Guy (RMG)* :the one with the black hair?
Kasey Version2K4 : dude, yeah.
RMG : hahahaa
RMG : that's my sister.
Kasey Version2K4 : whoops.

or:
Kasey Version2K4 :are you buying a house?
Kasey Version2K4 : how are you so grown up?
Friend of a Friend of a Friend that I've Never Even Met (FFFINEM) :condo
FFFINEM : that's all i can afford where i want to move
Kasey Version2K4 : man alive.
Kasey Version2K4 : that's scary.
FFFINEM :a bit....but i'm tired of waiting
Kasey Version2K4 :good for you.
Kasey Version2K4 : so when I quit my job because I've decided that I'm over working, I'll have somewhere to go.
Kasey Version2K4 : thanks!
Kasey Version2K4 : you are a good man.
FFFINEM: perfect...i'll make sure to find a two bedroom
Kasey Version2K4 : wait
Kasey Version2K4 : are we planning on having kids right away?
Kasey Version2K4 : because I kind of wanted a little "us" time first
FFFINEM : holy creepy

But I think my greatest accomplishment was an email that I recently sent to to an aquantance that I haven't seen or spoken to in five or six years. He found me on friendster, and sent a short hello and mentioned that my profile was amusing. Here was my reply:

"Ah, Mr. Guy I Barely Knew Six Years Ago (GIBKSYA), you flatter me. And such high praise from one of the funniest kids I've ever met? Everytime Mac would mention that he was on the phone with you or emailing you, I would shriek, 'TELL HIM I LOVE HIM!!!!' I'm pretty sure he didn't though, because Mac isn't as fond of scaring people as I am.

Even since I heard that you were in the DC area, I've been pressuring Bryan to set you up on a man date with someone I've dubbed 'My Boyfriend Another-Guy-I-Barely-Know,' or MBAGIBK, because of his abilty to make me laugh harder than just about anyone I've ever met. I have visions of the two of you romping through poppy fields, holding hands as your girlfriends look on, shaking their heads and wondering where they lost you two. Seriously. It would be love at first joke, I know it. You would feed him peeled grapes (or maybe he'd feed you, I haven't decided who's the giver and who's the taker yet) that he would promptly spit out as a result of one of your quips.

Yes, GIBKSYA, this is what I spend my days plotting. It might be time for a life. As for what else I do when not plotting your homoeroctic liason with some stranger, I'm just managing/serving at a little italian place near my apartment in rainy Portland. Actually the highlight of my day today has been popping a blister I got on my last 14 hour shift...now THAT'S entertainment.

Hope your life is more exciting than mine
-Kasey"

Oh man. I'm still chuckling about that one. Oddly enough, I have not heard back from him. Pussy.

I enjoy screening potential friends by frightening them within an inch of their life. It may seem like an unwise technique, but it has served me well in the past. My first words to gijyun were "YOU STUPID BITCH," and I now have access to basically all of her personal accounts and she mine. So if, through a few random encounters, you find me to be a psychotic nutcase, it probably just means I like you a whole bunch. Of course, sometimes this leads to a hot lesbian trying to trick you into coming to her place so she can "explore" with you, but hey, nothing's foolproof.

*names have been changed to protect the terrified.

My Father's Hats

2005-11-11T10:05:00.000-08:00

Tock

You play this game slowly before falling asleep.
Each tries to make the softest, barely audible sound,
And it is about all that you could never say.

Next to a person you love, face up to face,
Start audibly at first, the soundÂs made with your tongue.
You play this game slowly before falling asleep.

The room is swallowed in darkness, but what lies beneath?
Quietly above, the vault of stars moves round,
And it is about all that you could never say.

You held her, said you loved her, but she walked away;
Outside stones lie buried deep beneath snow.
You play this game slowly before falling asleep.

Whatever does not occur is yours, forever, to keep.
The stars are no oneÂs mirror. Say window, say home,
And it is about all that you could never say.

Listen long enough and what was color becomes sound.
Against the enormous dark, her small face remains blonde.
You play this game slowly before falling asleep,
And it is about all that you could never say.

-Mark Irwin

It's a strange fact of life that most conversations consist of talk of the weather and other trivialities. We will spend hours discussing exactly what went on in last night's game, but somehow the most important things, the stuff that really counts, can never find a voice. We are all so terrified of gambling and getting hurt or hurting someone else, even as we recognize that the only things that really matter are the risky propositions. I, who am pretty brave in most of my life, am particularly guilty of this. For someone so loud and boisterous, I break easily and have learned to bubble wrap my speech and emotion so that others can play nicely with it. I also tend to be as gentle with others as I'd like them to be with me, and this leads to even less being said.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my parents. During one of the worst weekends of my life (such a bad story for so many reasons), I informed my mother that my father was probably cheating on her. It turned out that, yeah, he was. I was pretty angry with him for a very long time. He was the person I trusted the most in my life, the person who'd taught me everything I know about how to be kind and love someone, and I couldn't handle the fact that he had betrayed our entire family. I was distant. I was pissed. And I was so very mean. I had never been any of these things with my dad before.

They're still together, so things worked out. Except for the fact that they really didn't. I love my mother to death, but she has never made that an easy task. When I told my brother what had happened, he paused for a second and then commented, "Well, I mean, you kind of can't blame him." That sentiment was echoed by more than a couple of people during the whole process, rightfully so. I know now how selfish I was. How all I could think of was how he had done this to her, to us. I never once thought about what extreme needs would make him violate his overdeveloped sense of morals. I knew he'd been so unhappy for so long, and yet that didn't once dent my self-righteous outrage.

Now I wish I could talk to him. I would tell him that I want to do it all over. For every long distance call to see how she was doing, I would make one to him. For every assurance that her family loved her, that we were here for her, I would make one to him, too. I want us to get drunk so I finally have the courage to say: You don't love her. Leave her. Have the courage to be happy, and I swear I will be there for you every step of the way. I know you were scared of losing us, but you won't.

But how can I ask him to have the courage to leave, when I don't even have the courage to give him the words that might make it easier?

May Morning

2005-11-10T11:16:00.000-08:00

A Blessing

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

-James Wright

On my one day off last week, I walked downtown. It was at 65, sunny, and as "Light and Day" started on my mp3 player, I lost it. I started skipping down the street like a ten year old, and there was no room for cars on the street because my smile took up two lanes. I knew that I appeared insane to anyone witnessing the spectacle, but I couldn't stop and, frankly, didn't want to.

I get that way sometimes. When the weather is nice, and I'm out somewhere by myself, I will literally lose my breath in how happy I suddenly am. It always takes me by surprise, and it is nearly always gone in a moment or two, but the intensity of joy of those moments shocks me every time.

I'm a pretty average kid, and sometimes even a little below average, but I will always know that my superpower is to occasionally have these moments where I know, where I have no doubt at all, that things are perfect and wonderful and almost more brilliant than I can handle. Eat that, Superman.

2005-11-04T23:19:00.000-08:00

Detachment

I keep the things
that are too close
far away

But sometimes they visit
during commercial spots
and meaningless anecdotes

The salt tracing
lines
through the detachment

I laugh
write it off to beer
and insomnia

I'm a little less happy than I was
but then again
I'm a little less sad
-Me (see the elephant now?)

A few years ago, I did something awful to a friend. Me, who was always so convinced of her own superiority. Me, who loved to pretend that she was so above all small superficialities that made people place their own needs above what was right and good.

Suddenly, I was down in the muck with the rest of them. I was just a pathetic, needy little girl who took what she wanted without a thought as to the repercussions. Fuck that. I knew the repercussions, but apparently, I didn't care about them. In return, I lost one of the most meaningful friendships of my life.

I crumpled after that. It was the fact that I had hurt someone I loved so much, but also the fact that I had become someone who could knowingly wound another human so easily. I live my life with a fair dose of guilt anyway (my fantastic catholic upbringing), but for a while there, I thought I might drown in regret and sorrow. I packed up my car and left. It became three months on the road, sometimes not speaking to another human for days at a time. I had nothing but time to wallow and think and try to figure things out.

I gained some distance from the situation in that trip, and some distance from myself as well. I became a watered down version of the person that I had been only months before. I had no interest in getting to know people in my new city of residence, I had no desire to drink or play, and found myself completely uninterested in the opposite sex. But the strangest thing would happen: smack dab in the middle of a completely normal week, I would spend two or three nights in my bed until 5am, sobbing for no reason at all. Or, over a drink with an old friend, tears would start streaming down my face. My composure, it seemed, was precarious at best, and it made me cling to the detachment all the more.

When I finally awoke from this two year self imposed period of sleep walking, I was like an infant absorbing the world. I developed one of those harmless, meaningless crushes on someone, and I delighted in how much fun it was actually liking a guy. I had honestly forgotten what it was like being attracted to someone. And I can still remember waking up one day when Boston was coated with a foot of snow, and wondering how I had missed the beauty of the city for the past couple of years.

It's all back--all the highs and lows of everyday life. I do, though, find myself a bit mellower than I had ever been. I am slow to anger, quick to forgive, and hesitant to judge, all of which would have been foreign concepts to KaseyBeta. But the crying jags have left almost completely, unless "The House of Mirth" comes on cable, or some asshole catches me off guard and makes me watch "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

Psalm of the Disarranged

2005-11-01T22:19:00.000-08:00

That's What I Said

It pricks the arms like poison,
knowing that some things, once chosen,
are yours and that meanwhile the night comes
much too soon this time of year.
There are things you will not be allowed to say.
You think them anyway, until they become you.
The two boys in shirt sleeves are in the street
again, skateboards balking
where the sidewalk buckles in geologic fault.
They seem mirthless, as they yell and fall
and the cold mist tries to veil them from passing cars.

Yesterday’s storm slammed the leaves to the ground.
Hiss, hiss, the tires go, against the scraps
of piano music, not Chopin today, from upstairs.
Someone tried to understand you once
and he’s dead, though not from trying.
Clunk, clunk, goes the landlady’s daughter,
trying out her new boots on the back stairs.

Things have narrowed to a point
and no gorgeous diction can get you out of it.
There’s just the flats of your feet,
willing each new step out of empty pockets
where change, keys, pens once rattled.
You threw them into the bushes on the next block
and then came home with the grey linings hanging
from your jacket like socks.
You forgot to check the mail
and when you opened the door
you brought the night in with you.

-April Bernard

One of the reasons that poetry holds such power for me is the fact that I cannot write it. I once wrote a letter to a friend, saying, "I can write elephant poetry that stomps and tramples you with meaning, that you can hear coming from twelve miles away. You don’t even have to scramble to get out of its way. You can take your time, have a cup of tea and discuss the weather before I get there."

I have always envied the subtle because I am anything but...in my real life as well as my writing. I don't even know what to say about these people who chose each word with such presion, who can call up eleventy million phrases to describe the exact sound of a fall afternoon . I am astounded a thousand times in a line of poetry, a trillion times in an entire stanza.

But of course, part of the dilemma in poetry is that its very purpose is to describe the indescribable. Words are so ineffective in relating the best and worst that our minds can throw at us, and though poets use sounds and devices to attempt it, there are just some things that must remain unspoken and unknown except in the hearts of those who feel them.

I wrote something down a while ago, questioning the responsibility you have to those you love, regardless of circumstance or reciprocation. It was long winded, wordy, and in the end said nothing I wanted it to. Then I found this, and in just two lines, it was there "knowing that some things, once chosen, are yours." Precisely what I was trying to say but couldn't achieve. Oh, relief. And then, "Things have narrowed to a point/and no gorgeous diction can get you out of it." Because sometimes, words are just words. And all the perfect poems in the world can't change that. And other things, other things that it seems Ms. Bernard wrote just for me, just for tonight.

I am in love with this poem this evening. Head over heels. Man, this is fun.

A leaf falls on loneliness

2005-10-21T00:43:00.000-07:00

it may not always be so

it may not always be so;and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another's,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be,i say if this should be-
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.
-e.e. cummings

Is there anything harder than love lost? Yes. It's feeling that there's still so much there; the whole reason you loved them in the first place. That desire to not throw the baby out with the bathwater is both seductive and destructive. It makes you want to keep all of the things that made you good in the first place, makes you want to watch baseball with them while still keeping that detachment it took so long to develop. You want the best for them, but deep down you still want them to struggle as much, if not more, than you did.

Losing love isn't as hard as keeping friendship. So says me. But then, I've been known to be wrong before.

Someone else is a cummings fan.

My head is in the air, but who am I?

2005-10-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

This is just to say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
-William Carlos Williams

I met my friend James when I was a freshman in high school. He was a year older and seemed so funny and alterna cool. I was, um..not. But I can remember being at lunch, and for some reason we started talking about William Carlos Williams.

It was one of those moments that you remember decades later. My insecure fourteen year old heart couldn't believe that there were other people who loved what I did, and certainly not this guy that was so far above me in the high school pecking order. I think our early teens are generally about being ashamed of everything we are, and trying desperately to be someone else, who, ironically, is also ashamed and afraid. When you find out that you might not be as repulsive as you once thought, it is a revelation.

James and I have been friends ever since, and I wonder how a simple, sweet poem about a fruit thief could make me one of my favorite friends in the world and lead to a pretty fantatsic adolencesence. I actually enjoyed my high school years, and it's mostly due to Mr. Carlos Williams. That's the power of poetry, me thinks: the ability to evoke such powerful emotions in the shortest, most efficient way possible. They have to make a connection quickly, and it enables others to do so as well. I've found quite a few connections through poetry, and the most important of them have been with myself.

By the way, my favorite-est James writes poetry as well as reads it: http://eyeforaniris.com/home.html

I be getting more stupider by the moment.

2005-10-19T23:23:00.000-07:00

It's true. I, the girl who missed only two questions on the English section of the SATs just a few years ago, have daily conversations that go something like this:

Me: What's that thing, you know, that you cut the other thing with...god...you know what I'm trying to say. It has points and it goes like this (makes emphatic hand motions). You know!
Them: No, I really don't. Please leave me alone.

Anyway, in my post college haze of reality TV and poorly typed IM conversations, roughly half of my brain cells have been lost and/or are asleep at the wheel. To slow my steady intellectual decline, I have decided to begin reading and paying attention to one of my first loves, poetry.

Poetry is a funny thing. It takes the kind of attention and concentration that isn't possible in a 25 minute public transportation commute, or even a fourty minute "I'm-exhausted-from-not-working-all-day-and-am-cuddled-in-bed-reading-some-crap-that-my-nearly-slumbering-mind-can-comprehend" session. These scenarios are where roughly fifty percent of my reading is done lately, sadly enough.

Poetry requires reading the same passage three, four, twenty times, reading aloud to yourself, pausing and reflecting, and all sorts of other things that can't be done while simutaniously watching "The People's Court." So this will be my new project, reading and admiring the wordsmiths who can express more in three lines than I could say if I babbled all day. I'm hoping, in my dime store psychology mind, that this might lead to the pursuit of other things I love but am generally too lazy to actually do.

In honor of this first post, here is the poem that inspired the project:

Poetry

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesmal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.
-Neruda

Holy crap, I wish I could read him in his original language.