the strangeness that follows a dance

A new poem... as of last night, it's been awhile since I've posted anything. This is another draft version, but you know I like to leave those drafts online. For whoever will like to see them. This poem may be a little wierd, but it was a response to a dance performance that I saw last night--also a little wierd, but beautiful in its strangeness. Here we go, comment as you like.


LIGHT THAT SHADOWS A DANCE

Flung their arms, legs into the whereabouts of motion–
light bulbs remember an invisible man–
the artwork, the book, the ceiling falling of light bulbs,
sky collapsing a darkness with electricity
and nothing calm. Not a sway exactly,
a lilting body-echo jilted and broken off at every
moment a new direction like a line of thought.
Yet somehow their gray sweeping gowns followed
each thought to its end. An overlap, sigh,
poetic sensation and darkness they wanted
to drown on their dance, shadows cast against gray
conflict inside the machine: wailing repetition. A breaking
off from repetition–a jilt, not a sway. Not the embracing
bodies compressed to a rock, gently. Not the gender-confusion:
man in a dress, boy-girl gnawing an apple to its poison core. Not even
putting the art on paper, in words, articulating
meaning, furthering thought. But the lusting,
demonic rape, broken minds and a silver, prostrate bicycle hiding
a pearl from her destroyer. First they were
a school of fish: together, then separate–
jilted again. And the pain of a classroom, of desks,
neon lights: a Benjamin Franklin game of invention.
Confinement to a room, a factory piecing together shoes,
shoes and a worship of shoes. Colonization pained them, but so did their own
destroyers in gray, thrusting their minds around
baby-hairs of pastel cheeks. They were this teeth-opening experience.

enigmatic poem

Another poem response to a friend's poem (Nora and Meg are brilliant poets)... this one's very "languagey"... so, we'll see if anyone likes it (or finds something funky about it).

ENIGMA:

This is not where we are.
Are we where "not is this?"
If I were on this, I'd no longer be on that.
Elsewhere is here, but not on this which is there.
Is there a "not is this" existing somewhere?
If this is that and that is this,
There's a there somewhere and a "not is this" elsewhere.

This "are if" elsewhere is "if there's"
here. Certainly uncertainty somewhere?

Are "this, that, there" somewhere? (And) This elsewhere?
Certainly here, not elsewhere, nor there.

Bothersome: knowledge vs. truth

I guess I could have been a little more explicit in my free-writing post (2 below). There was a line that proved bothersome to a reader, so I think I'll try and work it out... and see if it's still bothersome. Bothersome that I think this way, not because it doesn't make sense. (I keep writing "bothersome"... I must like that word a little.)

Anyway, the part that was... bothersome was this:

"I could end in chaos, but would still be happy
if I knew the chaos meant I learned something and stuck to the truth
that knowledge leads to disappointment ultimately."

There are some distinctions one needs to make in the reading of this. One very important separation is that of truth from knowledge. "Knowledge" here is referring to the reliance on book-knowledge, science, things that are written by men. I don't think knowledge is necessarily bad, in fact I'm quite fond of knowledge and learning... which is why "I would still be happy / if I knew...I learned something." But, there must be a difference between knowledge and truth. You can never know everything. You can never know enough, but truth? ...Now there's something.

"Truth" I think is something that God gives us complete access to. Where knowledge is endless and ultimately unsatisfying--"knowledge leads to disappointment ultimately"--truth is only a breath (a prayer) away and is unconditionally satisfying.

As much as I'd like to know everything-- or at least a lot of things--as much as I wish I could read faster and have more time and patience to spend sitting with a philosophy book or famous literature, it will never complete me. I will be disappointed in the end because I can never know enough. And I don't want to lose sight of the truth--that Jesus is all I need and all my heart longs for and he will never disappoint me.

This doesn't speak much to the "chaos" named in the poem / freewrite... but, if there are still questions about that, I'd be happy to address them.

P.S. These ideas, while something I had also thought about before, were prevalent last Thursday because of a Nietzsche essay my German class had been discussing... Knowledge was a main focus of the essay, not so much truth or chaos.

first draft friending poem

Any interpretations? Thoughts on this new poem / draft?

FRIENDING, HERE AND THERE

Free-loan bike, whose purple pink-seat,
whose sweaty glitter-basket let me
alone for months to stream-in campus.
Generous lender trusted me to friend her.

I was not so friendly, still, sitting
silent in the park, wishing my tongue would
work its magic, sailing over words
in accents, less American than surprising.

Hand-picked me a Strauss, a window-bouquet,
to set on streak-cleaned desk, shifted
into crawly web corner.
We sunk upon embroidered sheets,

where sleepless David wrote a psalm,
I slept in wakeful stares at corners,
thought of our burnt pancakes, butter-syrup,
place-mats quilted in place for surprise.

Love was not this headphone presence,
helloing, goodbying, blistering into late-night wind.
Love was not a bicycle starving in basement dark,
but strapped to the porch, whistling.

freeing the write, discovering where to stop.

I was responding to a poem a little while ago, and came up with a short free write... then just now, I decided that maybe I should keep going with the write. And when I read my friend Meg's blog yesterday, she talked about blogging as an act of playing, almost like fingerpainting. So... that's what's going on here. We'll see if anything neat or useable comes of it.

FREE THIS WRITE UP

In the lab we slink our shoulders forward
toward the desk, crates of death-once-living
scattered inside a highly-organized computer file
spew the number out into a statistic
we’ll study in a book and learn to slay our own
convictions momentarily finding critical thinking
in all of it. The intriguing side-thoughts
worry me. So I pass my tongue like yours to taste
the salted glass, and wince to steal aside the tired eyes
and worried glances.

I stopped too safely there and return now to progress optimistically
toward discovery, be it somewhere near.

A father held his daughter's hand, I wished it as mine
remembering the night we drank Belgien Ale, a full bottle
and drove to briarwood. Can I codify that? The briar or the wood?
The dark-wooded cipher: remembering that word inside "decipher"
excited me to discover and remember something no one told me;
that I realized. The process, for me, more important
than the outcome. I could end in chaos, but would still be happy
if I knew the chaos meant I learned something and stuck to the truth
that knowledge leads to disappointment ultimately.
Aphorisms, like in Gertrude Stein and Lyn Hejinian's works, come
presently forward: not quite truthy, yet bearing such qualities.
I see momentary truths, holding fest (fast) to Jesus as forever,
unwavering. Cryptic thinking leads to confusion, when metonyms
connect purely on a personal level.
Does something here connect to you?

I've gone no where, no progress. No images; how
I used to love imagery. Where'd it disappear to?

*I think maybe I should have stuck with what I stopped at before. If you read a poem like this, would you toss it aside because you couldn't get anything out of it? I'm just curious, because I want to know if people can connect to things like this... or if much of it should be left inside one's journal or one's head. People do write poetry somewhat like this, and I enjoy it, but then I wonder how far someone can go before it becomes outside of the reader's grasp or before it repels readers. Anyway. Thoughts on the matter?

Hospital needs a title

Another poem I included in my sample for the application... but I just took part of the title out. Need to think of a new title. Any suggestions?

HOSPITAL

Didn’t drink nothin, doctor,
just water from the faucet.
Always thirsty, only cold.
Sleep. Wake. Cheerios.
Sesame Street, sleep.
Drink.
Kids sleeping in this unit.
All an accident, believe
my crusty eyes.

I sit like you told me,
in a green plastic chair,
cut red, orange
construction paper feathers
for my paper bag turkey.
I’ll hang on my balloon’s string.
Please. I see your name-tag jiggling.

Hard, blood squeeze out
Sweet Jesus, fingertips, tingle.
Snot drips down face
on this circus robe.

Learn to take shots,
give stuffed Bear shots,
mom and dad shots,
not so bad. Till
they dump out the sugar
from the sugar water.
No orange pill bottle in my pocket,
promise.

I’ll take the shots,
but not here where sickies crawl
IV’s still attached, smell
of piss and soap.
Green JELLO slid down throat,
hair crimped into sweat.
Dad sits on the bed,
with lab-coat and tag.
Jiggling.

My eyes broke,
don’t know why they’re wet.
Don’t take my picture like this.
Please, dad.
Give my balloon back
before it pops.

myxomitosis

Myxomitosis is a word I heard in a Radiohead song from the album, "Hail to the Thief." Someone used the word in a sentence, perhaps saying that they had myxomitosis, sometime last semester... the memory is only now coming back. Not knowing its definition, I looked up myxomitosis and found out that it's a viral disease affecting rabbits, not humans. Okay, maybe you don't find this interesting, but it is odd that I'm just now remembering when I heard this word. At the time, I had noted it and decided to look it up when I came home... and three months later, I finally have.

Today in my Contemporary Poetry class we talked about Frank O'Hara, who is in the New York school of poetry (should the "s" and the "p" be capitalized?). He wrote many poems during lunch breaks, in which he would usually catalogue his days--capturing the exact times and the places and having all the details relate temporally, specifically. We read "The Day Lady Died" and noted that this day was like any other day, except that "Lady Died"... and "everyone and I stopped breathing." (That last line is so effective. I think I stop breathing when I read it.) His last stanza incorporates a memory of Billie Holiday performing in the "5 SPOT" and it makes the whole poem something unusual. Not the memory necessarily, but the fact that the day was otherwise normal, except that she had died. In some way, all days are unusual. Maybe the activities seem standard and boring, but can't even a memory make something unusual of a day? Not that my memory of "myxomitosis" is really anything to shout about, but I know I hadn't thought of it yesterday... and it enabled me today to have something to write about on here...

Does this mean that I can say this to anyone who asks: "I did have a strange Wednesday, come to think of it"?

Ann's poem

Hey, here's one of my poems in its revised state. It's one that was in my portfolio and I thought I'd post it... more of a taste of my poetry if you want, I guess. Maybe I'll post more later. Oh, and this is for my friend Ann G. who was in Germany with me last year.


SOPRANO ANN

Her voice, shrill, sings Soprano.
Drink tightens her chords,
loosens her tongue.
That weapon, the tongue.

She rattled German to waiters
in Ami-pubs,
who shirked her requests
when she sang them “auf Deutsch.”
Losing herself in her country,
with her loose and dangerous tongue.

She floats among hillsides:
Ireland, Scotland and
green green green.
Her “Claddagh” ring
faces inward and down,
hands cup heart, and
she sings a dream:
A kickin’ lover and pesto
pasta cooked with chicken,
frisbee tournaments alive with sweat.

Shrill she speaks,
scats Soprano with the band,
still, when teased,
she snatches loose prejudice
with her well-guarded and
courageous tongue.

I tried, applied, now I leave no place for regret.

This morning I turned in my creative writing application after having spent most of yesterday and days prior working on it. I need to thank Nora especially for all of the help, encouragement and time she put into helping me with my poems, during which she didn't even complain. She's a dedicated friend.

I keep feeling overwhelmingly blessed by the friends I have in my life right now. My small group is amazing and I leave it on Mondays overflowing with the knowledge that people care about me and all the stuff that goes on in my life. I wish I could adequately express my appreciation for these friends and for how God keeps putting people in my life and reminding me that I matter to Him and to people. How refreshing it is to think about this.

But the real reason I started this post was just to say that I'm pleased with how my poems turned out and with the portfolio / writing sample that I admitted with my application for the CW program. It helped that I wasn't looking at my poetry all by myself and that I could get someone else's feedback, but I don't feel like my poems were merely mediocre (I had been working under the fear of mediocrity for the past couple weeks). I still don't expect to be admitted to the program--and I certainly won't unless God wants it to happen--given the number of people who apply and the number they accept, but I know that I've tried my hardest. That's all that really matters for anything, in my opinion.

I wanted to try because I didn't want to regret that I hadn't. I think this has been a theme in my life lately: I tried out the School of Education and decided that it wasn't for me. I applied for this... and currently await the outcome. And I continue to think about graduate school and poetics and think that if I don't try, then I will never let myself go for it. Hmm... but that's still ahead. Now only a forethought. Who knows what God can do and will do in the mean time. Wherever he takes me will be where I'm meant to be.

writing, voice, and the literate world we're born into

Tonight I've been writing. Writing, revising, journaling about writing--diverting my attention from writing by writing phonetic pronunciations of words (homework, not leisurely)--and now I'm blogging.

I need to write a statement for my application for the Creative writing program, but I'm not even sure where to begin. That statement wasn't entirely true, because I've already begun... I just have breaked for too long and need to start again where I left off. I feel like most of what I've written, however, won't work. I'm corny when I first begin a writing assignment. That is, I say only what I already know and what's completely obvious and then I can push away that transparency and get to something interesting. A specific example of this corniness would be the first sentence I wrote as I sat brainstorming about my application statement. I wrote, "I was born to write." That's all. Cliche, to say the least.

But really, I can't imagine living and being unable to write my thoughts. I feel somewhat impaired as far as verbal / oral communication skills are concerned, which may account for the difference in my writing and my speaking voice (Megumi commented earlier on how my writing voice is very different from what she's experienced from me in person). I can't imagine anyone who's writing and other voices truly match--except perhaps those who are very good at speaking their thoughts... anyway... I don't know my exact thoughts on this. Although sometimes I wonder about what kind of intelligence there is in writing and rewriting--changing sentences to the very last comma--where the original and the final end up unidentifiable (I don't think that was the word I really wanted... but hopefully you understood). I wonder not so much about the intelligence, but about the voice--and to what extent can you change a work of writing before you lose the writer's original voice. This is a strange question and I don't plan on finding the answers--but I do like to think about that too when I work on poems. When is time to stop revisions, are there times when the original poem is the best? I think so.

But anyway... back to my statement about writing. In a sense, I truly was born to write... because of the world and the literate society I was born in. There's other support for my claim to a writer's calling. Not saying I'm destined to be a writer, merely that I will probably write up until I can't hold a pen anymore--because I don't think I could survive otherwise. I think there are many many others who would say the same about writing, so I think I'll leave this post with that... and I guess I'll get back to my... writing?

(Thanks for reading, by the way, if you did get to the end... I'm in a wordy mood, I suppose.)