starting something new in the morning

As usual, I started writing a poem... I'm not sure I should post it when it's hardly gotten started, but... I kind of want to anyway. I hope everyone's been well. I feel almost as though I've been walking on the moon for the past month and haven't made contact with the earth I know... This is hardly true, but it's my feeling of the instant.

This morning, I woke and immediately started writing (in the new journal that Megumi gave me--thank you, thank you, thank you. I love the way the paper feels under my pen--much smoother and more refreshing than the paper of my old journal). This felt like a break-through for me. To be honest, I've had little motivation to get myself to writing lately... there have been so many things to distract me from what part of life I rather enjoy and what I need to keep at... This morning meant a lot to me--pushing aside my desire to stay in sleep, I wrote:

*
I keep listening for sounds upstairs--
for little feet bounding along the hardwood floors.
I keep listening for what could be
the first squeals of morning,
but everything here is still.

A little thumping on the cieling never harmed
anyone. The rush of water in the pipes along
my walls, the tarantula sounds of creeping
within the vents. These sounds
are all of morning, noon and night;
and I want to listen and hold my body still,
so all the stillness in the walls and ceiling and stairs
will burst with the beating of little hands
on a drum upstairs.

Even the rhythm of my own lungs in the stillness
throbs along waves of wanting for the walls
to whisper, at least. They are all testing
the silence--to see how far
they can take it away from me.

Until now, I have learned to stand
along shingles of a tar-roofed shed,
poising my body to leap and fall
into a thin layer of gravel. This
is my backyard--and this sounds of chinking
stones and sore heals.
But, I jump again. Again,
making the chinks clip louder and louder
to beat against the silence of
my own blood, which isn't much
for silence, afterall.

Until now, I have learned to separate
the tongue from the mind--
enough to know they are two
and they are separate. You can keep one still,
while the other runs circles and cartwheels around silence.
This can easily tip the other way, as well.
And if the walls can really
speak, as peaple are wont to
claim they can, what are they thinking now--
in the stillness of this morning,
when even the floors wait with me for a sound?
*

To be continued...

the gist of what he taught me in virginia

What kind of job could an unusually quiet person with moderately poor communication skills obtain? Wondering, wondering.

I spent this entire past week touring through various parts of Virginia and scouting out familiar faces--or faces my mother had made it a point to see and (re-)introduce me to. I sat listening to conversations about more people whose faces I probably should remember, and I lied several times about my plans for the future. Only once did I make my lie so obvious as to tell someone (you know who you are) my dreams of opening my own business in parachute repairs, of earning enough money in order to start a career in skydiving and of living this skydiving life until I die happily and satisfied. Someone suggested I move to Germany and become a pastry chef. Did this person know how talented I already am at baking rich and delicate European pastries? Who told my secret? Another series of lies I could tell in order to appear more interesting to people.

I would like to believe that those who have a compulsion toward lying about things they've done or will do (or know of), are doing so in order that they will appear more favorably before those to whom they lie. With the exception of the ridiculous lie named above, I would say that every time I spoke something that resembled the following sentence, "I don't know what I want to do after I graduate," I did so in order to put the conversation about my future on pause. I've wanted to stall my conversation about my future plans for a few more months until I words that seemed a little more practical could come out of my mouth. (Also, maybe I secretly delight in believing that my relatives and family friends think I'm one of the dullest people they know--who can barely come up with a reasonable subject for conversation. I hope this latter isn't the case and that it actually disappoints me to supress myself from expressing my true hopes and desires--no matter how impracticle they may be.).

And how would those conversations have flourished (or dwindled, depending upon the other interlocutor), had I spoken up about some of those unsaid dreams?... I want to learn how to speak from the living part of me. Is not the part of me that lives--where my dreams and true passions thrive--the part of me where the Holy Spirit resides? And by supressing those true passions, am I not--at least partially--stifling the life that Jesus breathes through me into others? .... Still, I'm not sure I even know these desires well enough to speak them out. If my dreams come from God, I want to trust that he will mature them and bring them out in my life...

Virginia was beautiful; my family and friends were beautiful. I had been asking God if he was trying to teach me something while out there; maybe this was the gist.

an edit...an unfinished poem. sorry to leave it hanging.

Hey, everyone... here is an early stage of a poem I just started... thought I'd post it, because I've been slacking in the post-department quite a bit recently. Anyhew...


AN EDIT

This is an edit.
Slicing the first slabs of skin and muscle from my face,
replacing them with something (ironically) finer:
with eyebrows filled in to the eye’s edge,
with freckle or mole just above the corner lip-line,
something to hold up and smile with, as on a popsicle stick–
or better yet, on a tongue-depressor.
You get a face-forward. A no-comment response
to any question that would beg me to tug on stretches
of skin. It all might come up.

There was a path we followed: a sidewalk
under the awnings with raspy swirls of guitar
and buttery chords. Like previous faces,
the heels had been sliced off--
traded for new heels.
Stolletto shoes, for example.
Walking like a camel in a flamingo's dress.

You want to call out my bluff--
"Excuse me, ma'am? Your heels are coming up.
Tearing, I believe." Not only that,
but the sidewalk felt squishy and I left
holes after a fresh re-pavement. Re-cement-ment.

Resentment on my end. Crooking my leg up
to pry off the already-flappy heels
might force a groan or a twitch of the mouth.
You'd see I've traded in my old lips; and
now, I can't even sigh.

karaoke

Your brother called and wants to know if you'll be eating dinner here tonight and if they can go ahead and fix the microwave meal they've been saving up for a special occasion. Nights when you can't cook for them equal "special occasions" in thier minds. I always spell the word "their" incorrectly. This may be what you call runofthemill run-on, stream of conciousness writing. I know, I'm sorry. It makes you want to throw up your hands and call the doctor.

I met my father's boss tonight for the second or third time. My father, a doctor, has a boss who's a getthepartystarted-kindofwoman. A famous name around this house who had us all roaring up a karaoke storm, if you know what I mean. She had a few too many root-beers. At least, that was the joke. Perhaps I could say, with more certainty, that this woman drank too much root beer if she had been singing along with us. In all honesty, I can't write about this without confessing that it was I who seemed to have drank too much (What, but grape-flavored water and coke, had I been drinking?). There seemed to have been a surplus of songs that my sisters, parents, brother-in-law and I knew how to sing only the choruses or certain catchy bits from. Whole songs? Give me a break! For example, when my sisters and I sang Arethra Franklin's "RESPECT," the three of us shifted from singing the melody to singing back-up vocals--only in that instant realizing that we hadn't the slightest idea of what the actual melody was there. Those words on the screen can only get you so far. Try singing the "Macarena" without knowing the tune. Okay, that's not so hard. Try something a little more difficult--like "Surfin' USA". Did I mention that if you weren't a member of my family, you were exempt from participating in the karaoke activity? You could even refuse participation and get away with it. Next time will be different... (I'm conjuring up some kind of 'next time' in my head. Who knows whether there will actually be one.).

And that's enough. I s'pose this doesn't entertain you... getting the back-story and not even a good story of the karaoke-family spectacle. And if you are part of the family and missed this, someone will surely (attempt to) rope you on that supposed next round.