Check this out.

blah (for lack of a better term)

Numerous people have described me as quiet. (boring. uninteresting. unintelligent. dull. one-dimensional. unexciting. shallow. snobby. preoccupied. alone. distant. disconnected. out of touch. apathetic. lazy. inarticulate. unique. shy. uninterested. lacking.) blah.

Summer plans

to come on back to myself. to reveal secrets. (i'm completely obesessed with a clown that i haven't seen in fifteen years. he haunted me when i was a small child and now he has returned to haunt me into adulthood. i welcome him with open arms. companionship is sweet in any form.)

to write something about how i feel about being a woman. to theorize. i've studied a few theories in school and i think i have a few inside of me that need to come out, have a look around, and make a comment or two. to study. yes school's out for summer but this time i want to study yoga, meditation, and ancient religions with a lowercase r.

to go searching. alone. to grow up a little bit. to realize that the rest of the world would care if they knew what they were missing out on. (how will they know?)

Beautiful Poem

(I'll fill this part in when it comes to me.)

This can't be right:

God/poetry*
God/me
God/art
God/life

Am I missing something here? What's the link? ///

(*see previous post)

Heaven/Hell or English 101

Binary pairs:

black/white
up/down
left/right
east/west
us/them
self/other

Human beings observe the chaos that surrounds us and try to make sense of it by organzing things into binary pairs or opposites. We observe these things through our senses and then we make sense of the world in our minds by constructing reality. Human beings create our reality through our constructs, or ideas, about the observable world based on our own perceptions of it.

heaven/hell

I am bothered by that one. We can observe black/white or even us/them. We cannot observe heaven/hell. The "afterlife" is beyond our perceptions. So is God and all things "godly".

heaven/hell

is too simplistic for me. It sounds man-made, and yet it is beyond our observable reality. It seems to me that we, rather clumsily, assigned God and all things "godly" a label, just like we do to other things. But God is beyond our immediate perception. We can observe God's creation, but not God directly. We imagine so much on faith.

What is the reality of God?

Tell me all your thoughts on God . . .

I believe that you have experienced God.
That's a big experience, God.
God is bigger than us.
God is bigger than our experiences.
Experience is real. God is real.

All of us, all the time, should be giving God more credit.
All of us, all the time, should be giving each other more credit.

God is larger/greater than human experience.

Perhaps there is more than one way to experience God?

Untitled

My hair is wet from the tears of a young man who has felt God.

I used to feel.

Let's Talk, Part II

Stop interrupting me.

Emoticons are effective when used properly. (That's not enough though--they must also be read properly.)

Ok, I've moved on. Next subject.

Stuff--enough said there.

Play--previously, the opposite of work. Now, no longer the opposite of work.

Vision--more of it gets lost every day. I don't always recognize my friends.

Journalism--that sounds nice. I think I'll do that one day. (Not today.)

Poetry.

Boyfriend--yes, he is there. He is here. He WAS here; now he is there. He will be back here though, and I will be there. We will be (and are) together, that's my point.

Stuff--boyfriend, talking, about--.

A love poem--I love a poem. I love for a poem to be about all the things--the stuff--you can't say in everyday conversation.

I wish more people would read my poems. I wish I would read my poems to more people.

Me--a poet, no choice. No, not forced, by myself. No, I am not by myself. I am a poet by myself though. But that is a good kind of loan-some. I could use some--poems, and time to write poems. And ENERGY to write poems. (Poems ought to have energy, that's what I think.)

Me--poetry. Not conversation. No thanks, I'd rather read you a poem (I wrote).

Let's Talk, Part I

"Let's talk," she said.
"Ok, sure, let's talk," he said.

"Go ahead," he said.

"No," she said. "That's not what I meant at all. I don't want to talk in a conversation."

He said a hyphen.

She said an ellipses.
"I want to talk in a poem," she said.

He said a question mark.

She continued, though not as before.

testing 123....

I posted something yesterday about my mom's new blog (check it out......under Links: Squiggled Oughts & Lines), and now it's mysteriously disappeared. I hope this one will stick around for a while.

Is anyone else having problems with blogger?

Stop calling my poetry "deep" you ignorant sluts!*

A few people have recently described my poetry as "deep." But they have it all wrong (I hope you're reading this right now, you ignorant sluts).

If it's deep it should be literal:
digging a hole in the ground for a wooden box -DEEP- that's literal
having sex . . . -DEEP- that's literal

If you can "feel" it emotionally,-
but not physically- it might be
pretty language, but it's
not a poem.

Poetry is coarse and rough- literally.
If you touch it, you could get a splinter
If you licked it, you could get herpes- THAT'S LITERAL- not deep.

*said with affection by the writer

She never did and never could put words together, out of her own head.
-GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch

Expanding the Universe

"Pushing out the universe." Where are the instructions on this? Should I be looking inside myself or outside, at the world?

I don't believe in God. I want to make that clear. What else can I tell you about me?

Confusion hurts. Especially when you thought you had it right. For once.

Let's see . . . what else?

I'm only silent because I assume that if I were honest with you, you'd:
a) be bored with whatever I have to say.
or
b) hate me for it.

Oh, and there's never enough time to say it all, is there?

Tin Soldier

There is an almost-life-size tin soldier by my parent's fireplace.
Different angles reveal different soldiers:
a docile creature or an angry Nazi. Perhaps both.

A clown. Laughing on the outside crying on the inside. "Seen not heard."

Drink Order

“Hi!
I’d like an . . .
in-house
grande
decaf
extra hot
skinny
iced
orange-
cranberry-
toffee nut-
white chocolate-
mocha
sugar-free vanilla
peach
mango
latte
with extra whip!

Oh, and can I get a piece of non-fat
cinnamon-apple-streusel layered coffeecake to go?”

Punctuation Erotica

My boyfriend is a comm. major with an exhilerating interest in language. We were talking the other day about our favorite punctuation marks. His is the interrobang (!?), while I prefer the semicolon. What does this mean, for us--for the way we communicate, internally or externally?

!?: A question and an exclamation. In life, not only loud questions. Questions that come with something, some sort of expectation, perhaps. I don't know. Important questions can be whispered, but should be whispered with enthusiasm.

Invest in your questions. Invest time and thought into your questions. Invest words too.

;: The semicolon is a quiet mark. Subtle. It fuses the comma and colon, and it also fuses sentences. It involves bringing ideas together. I like the idea of that. Fusion. The interrobang also fuses, but more explicitly.

Perhaps I am an introvert. I'd like to think that interrobangs are a part of my being as well though.

Next time I see my boyfriend, I think I'll whisper a question to him, maybe about fusion.

my poems are all autobiographical

Bellarmine University hosts the Guarnaschelli Lecture every year and this year (at tonight's event) their lecturer was Salman Rushdie. Rushdie is hysterical. He talked about the novel as autobiography in disguise. He also talked about the parallels between good (captivating) oral narrative and good (captivating) writing. (Hint: juggling is a good exercise to try, but it undoubtingly requires much practice.)

I must read more Rushdie. I've read "At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers" in East, West. I must read more. I have a feeling Rushdie has a lot to teach me about freedom and religion, and freedom from religion, and about this thing called writing.

Musings on a Placid Day in September (9/28/05)

I leave you for a while to
sit in Theology class
and scribble lines,
trying to remember who I was
before I arrived
at this temporary
exchange of lives.
I press my tongue to
the knight in winter,
hoping to extend this process
by fleshing it out a little.
This is not high school,
I tell myself.

You should know
that I take pills
for the condition
you put me in.
The male species
overwhelms me and
you rhythm quite lovely
against this thick stretch
of mind gaping.
My slow beat, my feet
drip against
your webpages
full of words.

You remind me of songs
about staying in all night
cause baby, it’s cold outside
and where are you going anyway?
Off again to
envision me as if my
rhythms matched your speed.

You should know
that only the poets move me.
(Honey-tongues stick together.)
And you,
you got up there
like God,
a hard thing
to get over.

I have tasted winter knights--
like galvanized dreams
that condense off the
tongue—and
sometimes it’s hard to
let them go.

Screenwriters and Movie Stars

If I see them one day,
walking somewhere,
shall I thank them for
telling me such great stories
over the years-
Or curse them for
lying to me for so long?