An Ironclad Life

I once could laugh at the worst moment
Of a porcelain life,
When sourgrass stung
The scrapes on my ankles
And I was free to seek
A siren’s song.
I could tilt back, aglow,
Spinning in this chair of mine,
While laughing at the sound
Of laughter
Until the porcelain cracked
And made webs out of me,
And soon, a porcelain life was shattered.

I tried to laugh at the worst moment
Of a copper life,
When I savored the
Deepest of solitude
and dreamt of drinking in
The years deferred.
But I would curl up, ashamed,
In this same chair of mine
While sighing at the sound of laughter
Until the copper corroded
And made rust out of me,
Leaving you to find
My silent grievance:

I cannot laugh,
I cannot sigh
While leading an ironclad life.

The Day I Saw Star Clusters

Once,
I skimmed both ends of the world
With brazen fingertips
And somehow reveled in knowing that
I could never grip both sides,
Nor get the chance to
Flip the earth in midair and call
Heads or tails.

Yet somebody whispered in my ear today
That there’s a Soviet flag on the moon
Where ours is supposed to be,
That cathedral bells will swing at noon
Because a timer told them to,
That the look on your face when you laugh
Hides a person more empty than those
You laugh with.

I could have seen star clusters in the daylight
While underneath my roof, under layers of linen and lace.
I could have rolled that globe between my fingers,
Personified life and death,
Made a heartbeat and a steady breath
Finally within grasp.

I firmly held the earth between my hands today,
And held less between my palms
Than I had in either of my pockets.
I’ll learn to let the earth fall free from my hands today,
And remember life chose me, after all.

The first of typewriter ramblings

TO BREATHE THE FIRST LIFE
,one step two step
;maybe, just maybe a spoken word
of seesaws and trombones
(is it just me, or do they shrink
?/grow)
the pacifier between your lips --
a dress size every year
;then the stop.

i can count the stains now
#one beer two beers
TO LAUGH AT THE WORST
MOMENT
of a (porcelain) life
;i try,
;i tried

i see no maybes
.infinitely.
"quotations dont matter,"
"i don't matter,"
That
.infinitely.
matters.

i try,
i tried
TO LAUGH AT THE WORST
MOMENT
of a (copper) life
;rust lingers
where you can only feel
the -green-
where the -green- only matters.
Rust
.infinitely.
matters.

i cannot decay
before sinew hands && hollow
bones

i try
; i tried
to live an(iron) l i f e
.

"To be a poet is a condition, not a profession."

Lately, I've realized that I've become a person whose constant exterior battles have outweighed what I consider to be the most important battle one will ever fight. I have lost the overbearing need to chafe away at my thoughts and values until I am left with a raw form of self wholly fit to criticize and reflect upon. I have lost the sense of urgency in my chase to improve and more fully understand what I have found to be "me" and I've come to realize that it is solely due to my lack of writing lately.

Therefore, I feel like it is more important than anything else to restablish both my appreciation for literature and my own application of this expansion of the written word into my own writings. The following quotes have truly sculpted my reliance on poetry and prose, or at least clarified my assertions of it. I'm not quite a "poet" yet (although I pretend to be one), but these quotes revive all faith I have in becoming one. I'm only posting this on Facebook and Blogspot to remind myself that I CAN'T BACK DOWN and downplay writing's significance in my life, especially now that I've publicly declared it. Also, I know there are so many of you who understand the introspective power of literature and need the reminder as much as I do, or who might need the push to see beyond the intellectual and into the emotional.

_________________________________________________

Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition.
- Eli Khamarov

"I've been know to say, 'Oh yes, I do want to be in love. And yes I do want to be a loving, loving person. And yes I do want to be the mother of many children.' But at the same time, there is part of me that says 'I am also Lillian Hellman and I want to write the great novel of all time.' I want to go on the beach with my silent typewriter and I don't want anybody to bother me... because I want to enhance this planet. I came here for a reason. I didn't come here to be a mother. I didn't come here to be a nun. And I did not come here to be a cleaning lady. I came here to be a poet."
- Stevie Nicks, 1983

"Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings with form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."
- T.S. Eliot

"Poetry is all which gets lost in translation."
- Robert Frost

"A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: 'Sing for us soon again;' that is as much as to say, 'may new sufferings torment your soul.'"
-Soren Kierkegaard

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race and the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."
- Dead Poet's Society

A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.
- Rene Char

Bonne Hiver, the first chapter

I want to bask in
A beautiful winter beside you.
Walking with our minds
Interlaced
Like his and her
Fingertips brushing
In their first contact,
Blushing
in some type of
Reverie
Even the greatest of loves
Never knew.

And you,
You're like a
Beautiful Wisconsin winter all
Over again
As I step inside from your doorstep
and regain feeling
In those fingertips.

Because I saw you as
Black ice
from the moment I met you
and God,
How I want to misstep and
Sweepingly glide
Across such a magnificent terrain.
Maybe I'll get lucky and
Slide across a crack, and
We'll plunge headfirst into
Liquidated darkness
Where its impossible to discern
Why such a beautiful person
Froze over in the first place.

If you let me in,
I might
Swim towards the surface and
Amidst the shiver
And the fear,
Bask in the chance
To see the light emanating
Under the wake
To see through the same eyes
You do.

Coffee Talk

I looked her in the eye that evening and spoke some of the only truly honest words she'd ever hear out of me. This time, there was no intricate detail I'd thrown aside and no implication curved out of the corners of my mouth. I was ten times smaller than her for that instant. I slowly crumbled into the remnants of blueberry scone that had fallen from her lips moments before. She didn't notice it then, like I doubt she noticed me all over again. She wasn't staring at a body across the table anymore, but a soul: save of expanding lungs and that void in my right eyebrow, of scars.

The words had escaped me: "I am not a strong enough person to throw my cards in and settle for a polite handshake and coffee talk for the rest of my life."

Oh, and of course she told me that I was wrong, and that I was the strongest person she knew. Of course she jabbed at my ribs and reminded me that I can hold my breath until every last molecule of oxygen inside me has been robbed of all its worth. She brushed her fingertips along the scar underneath that faulty eyebrow and quietly requested to hear the story behind it again. She remembered hearing about glass, she whispered. There were so many things I wanted to whisper back.

I left her at that table and frankly, I wanted to believe that I'd made some huge mistake and being a survivalist really was the ultimate test of self-empowerment. It wasn't a matter of weakness, I told myself, if I continuously held that lighter to my face, or even just kept fighting like the senseless warrior I had became. I, after all, am a survivalist.

She'd know strength if she would stop looking for it in every action I take, or lack thereof.

I'd know strength if justice meant nothing and happiness meant everything.

My Soul Resides in a Haunted House

It’s so effortlessly poetic,
The disillusioned city lights
Screaming something vital at me.
I guess I let the sirens seem cynical
While I laid, half dressed, against my
Creaking bedroom wall, closed my eyes
And just listened.

I could smell the cobwebs burning,
First along the ceiling,
Soon to my nightstand.
I had creaked my door open.
Your heart pounded butane
Through flimsy veins,
Admiring Arachne’s work
In every corner of my mind,
Every crack in the windowsill.
And then, in all your glory,
You ignited.

I suppose it really is just that easy
To watch years of ignorance disintegrate.
With every pale strand
Charred black from end to end,
I yearned to hear the bumps in the night
And creaking and cobwebs and chaos
To give my soul a tangible reason
to feel haunted.

Now, I sit in dead silence,
Blowing voids in the smoke,
Ringlets in the fog.
Me, in the silence,
With ghosts that don’t know where the door is.

Internal Conflict on a Mountaintop

I reminded myself today what I live for.

I live for myself, and also for You. "You" are the silhouette of an oak tree in the distance in front of a cloudless sunset. You are the moon waning and waxing and waning once more, rising sometimes at midnight and others at midday. You are the frightful exhilaration one feels when standing at dangerously high altitudes, save of oxygen, and somehow not even caring in the presence of beauty of the snowcapped mountains in all directions. They stand so real and surreal that the familiar, yet hugely exemplified reaction on my tongue nearly implodes my taste buds although my mouth hangs open and empty.

Where did "You" go? Did I lose You in the fight to focus only on the colors behind the dark, yet breathtaking oak? Did I hide from the beauty in the wane of the moon while embracing the wax, or from the abnormality of it's rare rising in the midday while hoping for the world to mysteriously change, and stop changing?

If I stood on those mountains now, would I struggle desperately for air and in my moments of near-death weakness, fail to realize I have consequently seen heaven?

The myriad of differences between being long-lived versus living.

The day has come years too early; the one where one walks along a sidewalk of a crowded street and sees an eighty-year-old woman walking to the same beat, with the same fallen shoulders, with the same look of constant apprehension that he or she has oneself.

I discovered today that I walk from destination to destination completely reliant on this woman's cane.

I discovered today that I cannot smile without feeling my cheeks stiffen.

I discovered today that I have been robbed of years and years. While those who have lived as long as I begin to stiffen in their fingers and knees, I will have already began stirring in my grave.

The never-ending parent saga

I may never know if the circumstances truly called for a second chance or not, but it seems to me that they have never deserved it.

We argued today. Well, it was more of me being yelled at for once. Usually I do my part in the fighting, I'll admit, but today was different. My sister wanted to go see Sex and the City and I was really, really tired. I told her I'd go but if she was willing to go another time, I'd prefer it. So she went and told my mom that I refused to go and my mom flipped out.

Basically, my parents locked me in their bedroom and yelled at me. Their list of complaints for the evening: I am the most self-centered person they've ever met. My life is so perfect and my family is so great that I have no room to complain about anything (yes, these words actually came out of my mom's mouth). I asked to leave and my dad told me that if I did, my head would meet the wall. He then continued to tell me that I am the sole cause of all of our family's problems. Financial, emotional, blah blah blah. All of it.

Usually, I fight back. Usually, I will raise my voice back at them, stand up for myself. Tonight was the first time in three years where for all of the literally ten minutes I got yelled at, I covered my face with my hands and just waited it out.

I am sick of taking the blame for things that aren't my fault. I am smart enough to know when I push the line or when I truly deserve the grief they give me. I know when to back down, succumb to their ideas, even when I disagree. I know when I'm in the wrong and I usually take accountability for my part, although I never do so without pointing out their fault in a situation too. Tonight, I didn't say anything. I couldn't say anything. Tonight, I realized that I am a completely different person from three years ago, but they haven't changed. There are many reasons for why this is... but nevertheless, I cannot handle it.

I just... don't know what to do. I can't handle this. I can't handle any of it, and I especially can't handle it alone like I have been.