Poetry Log

2005-03-15T11:27:00.000-08:00

After an amazing show at the Fox, Angelica and I befriended the awkward but incredibly intelligent Erlend Oye at IHOP around one-thirty. We are now going to take him thrift shopping.

2005-03-14T09:20:00.000-08:00

This morning, I'm off to retrieve David from the bowels of DIA. Then I'm heading to the Fox Theatre to see Kings of Convenience with Angelica, Mallory, and possibly Sam. Any events involving Sam are precluded, at least mentally, with a 'possibly'.

I care about everyone, but most of the time it doesn't matter. To me, that is. Right now nobody really matters because I'm tired.

2005-03-12T15:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday evening, I saw a substantial number of people at the Trident with whom I had awkward dealings...Devin and, surprisingly, Collin were there, female Sam with a pretty tattoo, the infamous Shannon (and another mousy friend-of-shannon) apparated as soon as I took my headphones off...
At the arrival of these people, I waved awkwardly and thought about pretending that I hadn't just finished my book, so as to avoid being accosted. But it was too late. I then planned on Angelica swooping in on some type of magical Asian ninja flying machine to save me, but she apparently knew Shannon and Shannon v.2 from high school and immediately launched into typical mind-numbing conversation with them. Samuel came to save me, but he too was momentarily sucked into the vortex of filthy thrift skirts and insane cackles. Then fish-headed Brian appeared and I coaxed Samuel out of the door.
It was a night straight out of Greeley.

2005-03-11T14:21:00.000-08:00

Sestinas are generally known for functioning only as poetic exercises, because the form is so strictly particular. This sestina not only follows the repetition of endwords, but the beginning words were repeated in the following rubric:

Beginning Words:
1 2 3 4 5 6
4 5 1 3 6 2
3 6 4 1 2 5
2 4 6 5 3 1
5 3 2 6 4 1
6 1 5 2 4 3
2+5;4+3;6+1

End Words: (traditional sestina form)
1 2 3 4 5 6
6 1 5 2 4 3
3 6 4 1 2 5
5 3 2 6 1 4
4 5 1 3 6 2
2 4 6 5 3 1
2+5;4+3;6+1

This doubled word-pattern became problematic in the concluding three-line stanza, in which the two mandatory words per line became four.

For my end-word choice, I selected three pairs of rhyming words, which create varied rhyming schemes (or lack thereof) for each stanza.

Also, the poem is composed in iambic tetrameter, although occasionally a non-accent will fall on the last syllable of the preceding line.

Developing this form as I was composing the poem, I ran into several problems:

1. The word 'sky' became increasingly overused.

2. Double 'and's in the first stanza became annoyingly repetitive. This also caused severe run-on sentences, due to first lines of following stanzas being 'and'. 'To' would have been a much better word to double.

3. General repetition of inner words is somewhat mind-numbing.

4. Unaccented syllables are occasionally missing, due to poor first-word choice.

5. Meter was completely thrown away in the last three-line stanza.

I also accidentally did one clever thing, which was using the words 'to' and 'for' at the beginning of lines two and four. I am proud of my subconscious intellect, although this coincidence is hardly enough to forgive the dull and dragging sestina.

exercise in assisted thought

in daily life, one simply ought
to stainless-steel-stare at the sky
and judge the streets on more than looks
for covered wagons slowly taught
silver skateboards sailing by
and coffee-sippers wearing books

for one can read so many books,
silver-searching, but one ought,
in life, to let thought pass us by
and stainless-steel-stare at the sky
and eruditely we were taught
to skate-sail past on lovely looks

and judge the masses with a look
and judge the cover of a book
for slowly, surely, we were taught
in pantomines that people ought
to paint in creases of the sky
silver cloud-childs waltzing by.

To search the pleasant passers-by
for brains and brawns and loves and looks
and pluck like feathers from the sky
silver seeping verbose books
and, in a dream, to know one ought
in love to do as one was taught.

Silver wisps of dream we taught
and trained to travel quickly by:
to do exactly as one ought
and smile serenely as one looks
in paper cuts and soft-soled books
for fatal friendship and silk sky

and visions between us and sky
in silver screens, each one is taught:
silver scars are born in books
to slice and scrape and then sail by
for we are mindful of our looks
and do what people say we ought.

To silver sky and long good-byes...
And for teaching calculated looks...
And...one ought avoid the truth in books...

2005-03-10T16:10:00.000-08:00

I wrote something long and depressing, but it was pathetic and I deleted it immediately.

I found someone I knew from a while ago weblogging pathetically and wistfully after me today. Hah.

Stroke my shrinking non-music-related ego.

2005-03-10T08:09:00.000-08:00

In the evening
as far as the eye can see
herds of black pianos
up to their knees in the mire
they listen to the frogs
they gurgle in water
with chords of rapture
they are entranced
by froggish, moonish spontaneity
after the vacation
they cause scandals in a concert hall
during the artistic milking
suddenly they lie down like cows
looking with indifference
at the white flowers of the audience
at the gesticulating of the ushers
black pianos.

-Jerzy Harasymowicz
(translated by Czeslaw Milosz)

Thursday...tomorrow I'm going home...home to nothing...fun...

2005-03-09T14:52:00.000-08:00

I've started a collection of dead skin using an old black binder and scotch tape.

FaceBook keeps asking me to identify my friends. People continue to list me as their friend, and then I am prompted to reciprocate the hand of friendship.

FaceBook says "Is ______ your friend?"

Well, let's be honest FaceBook. No, they're not really my friend - I had IB World History with them, and we shared some good times, but we kind of lost touch after high school and I probably wouldn't take a bullet for them or anything...

I don't like friends. FaceBook tells me that I have one hundred friends. This is a fat lie.

2005-03-09T12:23:00.000-08:00

I had my first harp lesson today. The harp is an easy instrument to play - although most instruments are easy to be at least intermediately skilled in, if one has piano background. Music is kind of boring me these days. This is too bad.

I ordered many things online last week, back when I had money. They all came this week, just as I ran out of money. So I am now the proud owner of the 'Three Colors' Trilogy on DVD, as well as 'Tropic of Capricorn', 'Plexus', 'Ready Okay' by Adam Cadres, and 'Brave New World', which I devoured last night. I then went to Panico's, a new fast-food Italian place downtown. They have delicious subs and waiters who bring pitchers of draft beer to underage girls. I appreciate these types of people.

All of my classes on Friday are cancelled. I fear that the upcoming week in Boulder will be exceedingly dull, and filled with arguing with my sister over the true ownership of my car as well as commuting to Greeley a few times for the religious science folks.

However, the Kings of Convenience will be making a cameo appearance in my Spring Break week. Hurrah!

Ben says people in Dublin don't sit in coffee shoppes wearing books. This is a shame...neither do people in Greeley, for that matter...probably because none of them can read, or don't believe in spending money on books. Why, for the price of two new books at Barnes and Noble, one could purchase an entire pony keg of Keystone Lite!

Tonight I will see Christopher O'Riley. He is an amazing, amazing man.

Michael bought me dinner last night and Crawford bought me breakfast this morning.
'Nice' is the nicest thing that I can say about either of them. Unfortunate.
Something may be wrong with me.

2005-03-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

Everyone is wandering around the music building like zombies. My forms teacher actually cancelled class halfway through, exclaiming "You kids all look dead today...why don't you go take naps" and waving us out of the room.

Its worse than it was the day after Bush got re-elected.

Stream-of-Consciousness Realist Pantoum

2005-03-06T10:43:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday, after church,
I made myself breakfast.
Two cigarettes and a beer.
I don't like to cook.

I made myself breakfast,
and I will be a bad wife.
I don't like to cook,
and I don't clean things either.

I will be a bad wife
and I am currently a bad person.
I don't clean things
or think about things.

I am currently a bad person.
I don't care about people
or think about things
or do anything important.

I don't care about people.
I don't try to help them
or do anything important.
I don't like talking.

I don't try to help.
I don't like to cook.
I don't like talking.
I don't clean things either.

Sixteen

2005-03-02T17:11:00.000-08:00

My boyfriend was a curious hairy hobbit
with stubby fingers and a short neck
with almond frizzy pork chop sideburns
and a frayed yellow tie-dyed T-shirt
with a crazed wolf on the front
that he wore every Friday.

I was sixteen, and had never been in love.
But sixteen is fairly old
and I was beginning to worry
that my brain was missing
some imaginary pulsating
gelatinous 'love zone'
they had put on the overhead
when they explained brains to us
in seventh-period Psychology.

2005-03-02T16:51:00.000-08:00

These poets are somehow able to fill chapbook upon chapbook with poetry...look at e.e. cumming's list of publications...'XLI Poems', 'Fifty Poems', 'Ninety-five Poems'...I once dated a boy who would sit down before he went to sleep and just jot a poem down in a tiny green notebook every single night. It takes me a long time to write a poem...I can't apply everything I've learned...form, syntax, sounds, grammar, alliteration, rhyme, feet...much less write anything that even remotely resembles art.

I cycle through these artistic desires...for a week, all that I will want to do is read and expound upon things, then I will lose my interest in my novel, but have a sudden urge to paint something, to create something tangible and three-dimensional that I can cradle in my hands or throw at someone...then I will bury my nose in one of sixty blank books that are still patiently waiting for me to fill them...and then, when I'm feeling extra pathetic, I will abandon all of these mediums and simply think about the tragic and ignorant lives of leaves, or the amazing concept of graying hair(not my own), or how many pieces of paper circulate the computer lab in a single day.

Let us go then, you and I...

2005-03-02T16:49:00.000-08:00

For I have known them all already, known them all:--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

- T.S. Eliot (from Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

2005-03-02T10:54:00.000-08:00

I.
His wrinkled linen shirt
peppered with espresso stains.
One index finger
strumming the china saucer,
the other swimming in a sea
of ruffled brown hair.
Red wrinkly toes
exposed by Birkenstocks.
A florentine melts onto the table,
where Nietzsche lies, closed,
not to be read,
just seen
by impressive passers-by.
Wine-stained teeth, smiling,
smiling at me,
I imagine
incorrectly.

II.
His hair was in an uproar
flopping around his pale face
like an ancient composer
with soaring shirttails.

We talked for only an hour,
covered generic topics,
but an intangible sadness,
a glass of white wine,
and lingering out-of-place eyes

soon prompted each of us to believe
we had something profound in common.

Deserting slurred arguments
and drunken philosophers
we shivered pathetically
on his neighbor's roof.

we touched each other's hands and faces
like lovers going away to war.

Education

2005-03-02T10:50:00.000-08:00

I.
Autobiography rots,
Teacher told us.
I squirmed in my desk,
unable to imagine
any stories
more interesting
than my own.

II.
In July, I was caught;
stuck; desperately
pondering the meaning of life;
of existence,
of quantum physics and
the age of the universe.
I was contemplating
everything clichéd
that I could reach
with my grubby young hand.

III.
Clichés, Teacher told us,
were bad news.
He said
Avoid Clichés
Like The Plague.

55356

2005-03-02T10:49:00.000-08:00

Beams of blank sunshine
shooting from his teeth
like lasers,
he proudly announced
that he had found Jesus,

as if Jesus had
been gift-wrapped and tucked
at the end
of a childhood
birthday scavenger hunt.

Divination

2005-03-02T10:44:00.001-08:00

Always be ready for the unexpected.
Someone you have dreamed about may visit.
Better clean house to make the right impression.
There are some things you should not think about.

Someone you have dreamed about may visit.
Is it an old friend you do not recognize?
There are some things you should not think about.
Who is the stranger standing at the door?

Is it an old friend you do not recognize?
Notice the cool appraisal of his eyes.
Who is the stranger standing at the door?
You sometimes wonder what you're waiting for.

Notice the cool appraisal of his eyes.
Better clean house to make the right impression.
You sometimes wonder what you're waiting for.
Always be ready for the unexpected.
-Dana Gioia

2005-03-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

I want to clutch onto you,
he told me that night,
until my knuckles turn ghost white
cling onto you
like the safety bar
on the white wooden rollercoaster
beside my backyard.

i did not speak.
i could feel him already,
clutching, clinging, wringing
love out of me
like a dirty auto shop rag.

2005-03-02T10:36:00.000-08:00

A pantoum is a fixed form which came from Malay, in which lines 2 and 4 are repeated as lines 1 and 3 of the next stanza. Rhyme is not utilized in this form.

Not a saunter or sashay, merely a walk
passing the same three blurry trees
skinny muddy footprints
nestling on sidewalk squares past.

Passing the same three blurry trees
clouds of dead skin cells
nestling on sidewalk squares past
as I walk, heel-toe, heel-toe.

Clouds of dead skin cells
leaving me, unnoticed
as I walk, heel-toe, heel-toe.
And its suddenly you

leaving me, unnoticed
to walk a different path
And its suddenly you
I'm noticeably lacking.

To walk a different path
takes great valor and courage.
I'm noticeably lacking
forward propulsion.

Take great valor and courage
nestling on sidewalk squares past.
Take clouds of dead skin cells
and its suddenly you.

2005-03-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

We are not lovers, not brother and sister,
though we drift hand in hand through a hall
thrilling and burning as thought and desire
expire, and, over this dream of life,
this life of sleep, we waken dying -
violet becoming blue, growing
black, black - all that
an iris ever prays,
when it prays,
to be.

- Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee sat in front of me fifteen minutes ago, sipping a cup of Univeristy-manufactured coffee out of a styrofoam cup. He spoke of tracing the cup and the coffee's origins back past the plastic bags they came in, all the way back to the soil and the sun. Each of us exists in the center of a totality of causes. And there is something more organic about life than any of us have time to realize - the simple act of saying 'thank you' upon inhalation and 'good-bye' upon exhalation, the idea of functioning at the limits of our own will...this is all forgotten. Social interaction seems to cause a deeper side of us to shut down - as I was listening to Li-Young Lee speaking, I was amazed by how quickly and articulately he answered every question that Dr. King or I threw at him - as if he had already thought of them before. But he is not a person who needs people, or desires them, which makes him something more than human, something animalistic, something natural. Now I need only to find a dozen or so more of these hybrids that somehow remember that we are just self-glorified animals, preferably some of my own age, because coffeeing with Li-Young Lee and Robert King is moderately intimidating for me, knowing both of their amazing talents, and disconcerting for the people sitting around me. It isn't very often that you see a twenty-year-old girl out with a fifty-five-year-old Asian man wearing Buddy Holly glasses and a seventy-year-old dirty Midwesterner who uses obscenities only to elicit the surprise of his spectators, especially not in Greeley, and it seems to bother people. I suppose that it would bother me, if I hadn't accidentally become intangibly open-minded to the point of inability to relate to the people around me anymore...

My Last 48 Hours

2005-03-01T07:45:00.000-08:00

Midterms and coffee, playing the drums, postering Pearl Street, yoga, napping, drinking wine, Tacos Rapidos, passive-agressive behavior, paranoia.