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Poetry Arrived In Search Of Me
Y fue a esa edad...Llego la poesia a buscarme. -Pablo Neruda

Sure. Have another Maker's, Kasey.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006
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.
11:09 PM :: 5 comments ::

Kasey :: permalink


Buzzworthy

Saturday, March 25, 2006
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.

4:23 PM :: 1 comments ::

Kasey :: permalink


It Takes a While to Disappear

Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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.

4:27 PM :: 2 comments ::

Kasey :: permalink


Casida of the Reclining Woman

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?
2:00 AM :: 0 comments ::

Kasey :: permalink


Beneath the Waves

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

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


8:50 PM :: 1 comments ::

Kasey :: permalink


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