A laugh can remind me of so much, even if I've never heard the laugh before.
...
I'm feeling melancholy this evening. I'm not sure why. The poems I've written lately have been different. People and books and music are influencing me. (As always, I suppose.)
I haven't been blogging much, but I don't suppose my "faithful readers" hate me for it. Because after all, I can write whatever I want here, however often (or seldom) I choose. A line and a half from a recent poem (that might show its face here, in time, when I feel able to relinquish it):
But you are silent, because I am telling the story. I am the one
with the pen.
...
Grief and pain are beautiful things to hold close when they are not my own. Even the antonyms to those, if they make me somber, are captivating. Other lines (from last year):
This song used to make me cry with intensity---
silent, rhythmic sobs. It was a bit of eternity
on the tongue of my mind; I could not hold it there
before it melted, iced sugar, into tears.
Beauty that made me cry. I reveled in it.
...
It's all about me. But it isn't.
I will be the rumpled bedsheets,
the stolen ivory, the discarded stage,
every voice from your dreams, all the apples
you ate as a child. You'd trade your lunch
for me. If you could traverse this wasteland
to discover what you want,
you would arrive where there are trees.
If it's this hard to keep track of my own one life, how hard must it be to give up this self-centeredness? I'm not sure I can, as a human. I'm too self-aware.
To explain, I turn to words. My own are not enough. Here are others:
• "O Taste and See"
• "The Summer Day" (the last half particularly)
• Nothing here, but I can't leave it at just two
...
I have this idea about poetry. Lately I write several word choices when the one doesn't come to mind. It helps me later, sometimes, when I look back and edit things (which I don't always do). I can cross off one choice, narrow it down, maybe add another. But I have this idea of having all the choices stay there, and show up in turn. For instance, if the poems were online, they would show up different each time someone went to that page. Not so very different, perhaps, but different enough to mean something. It would be like having a conversation with someone with Alzheimer's (I did this last week). The same topics keep coming up, with many of the same words, but each time the conversation can be nudged in a different direction.
...
Different directions. That's what I meant for this post to be about. I have one life, right? "One wild and precious life." Sometimes it doesn't seem like my life; too often I step back and examine all of this...and laugh.
I may not be doing all the things I should. I may be too withdrawn. I may be spending too much thought on things. But when it comes to it, I've got to do it this way, because it's mine. (Everyone figures this out, one way or another, at one time or another, and talks about it in some way...or another.)
...
Somehow I can write all this from within myself, set it out and just leave it here. I really don't understand this whole blogging thing, despite the fact that I've been doing it for a year and a half. But I like writing. I write. I'm a writer. So there you go. (That's probably the first "you" in this whole post. I, I, I.)
...
Something coming like morning
after too little sleep.
My eyes are dark under the lids
and my lashes cannot hide what I've missed,
what I haven't seen.
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