SheFallsSoftly

I don’t like to write anymore. I know that this is strange and completely out of canon for me, but writing just makes me unhappy. How much misery have I recorded in the last hundred or so posts on this website? How much of my soul have a bared to a cavernous spectatorship that will not comfort me?
When I write poetry I have to allow a mania to overtake me. I become obsessed with words, repeating little snippets of lines over and over again, pacing and humming and crying all over a few little words. I do not want to do that anymore. When I write in my journal, my feelings of anger and disgust are only amplified. I write only to be reminded that I am alone in this. That there is no one for me to speak to.
Really, though, that isn’t the case. Really everyone understands, and if I’d just set down my 5-dollar words for a minute I’d see that. Really my emotions are basic and human and universal. Really my loneliness is a wall of pseudo-intellectualism I’ve built around myself.
So I don’t really do it anymore. I don’t need the anxiety.
But I came here to say this anyway.
Everything I thought I knew about my world has changed.
All of the most stable couples have broken up. I have been watching my friend surge and rumble with the changes of growth that are, after all, inevitable. I have watched this tear apart the group that was built painstakingly.
All of the kids that I thought of as the “sketchiest” have changed their ways. The death of a friend and teammate has become a catalyst for a more-legal style of living.
Everyone is learning that they are not immortal. That life is not permanent. Things change.
I’m watching it happen and it’s changing me too. My belief in eternity is just one more part of an innocence that I won’t get back.
And so instead I listen to music that reminds me of the-time-back-when, the-time-before. I have a playlist for a time that I’ve come to understand and I live in a confusing place where nothing is certain. Nothing at all is certain.
Here, here I used to say “except that I love him.” I would imagine that my love is the only stable thing in the world, but I know better now. Things will inevitably change. Perhaps we’ll grow apart. Perhaps we’ll grow together. But our love will not remain the same love one way or another.

Well. I never said my love life made any sense. The run down is as such; I’m still in love with Billy. Big surprise, right? In spite of how difficult it is/was for me to let go of Ryan, I feel like I have work with Billy still to finish.

I know that there isn’t much I can do to convince anyone that this is a good idea, but if it’s a mistake it’s my mistake to make, and if it’s right then I’ll try to be pleasant and not rub it in your face. Really, I’m happier now than I’ve been in ages. I’m making good decisions that really make me feel overwhelmingly confident in my sense of self.

Love is a many splendoured thing.

I experience the absence
Like the rotation of the moon
for the tides,
as muscles work together,
one contracts and one expands,
I find that to be pulled at all
I must be pulled both ways.

I experience the absence
As a burning pit
Below my lungs–
A lurching disgust.
My flesh rejects the past.

Gone and yet here.
Loved and yet hated.
I experience the absence
Through cold panes of glass
On quiet sleepless nights.

I experience the absence
As the sobs after a nightmare
Not tolerated to remember,
Not able to forget.

1. Honors perspectives courses
2. Working on debate
3. Sucking at guitar hero
4. Worrying about money
5. Caring what other people think
6. Settling into medication
7. Trying to deal with problems without professional help
8. Sending text messages in latin
9. Keeping a boy/girlfriend
10. Working at La Luna
11. Having to miss dance
12. Drama
13. Hating my body
14. Wanting to change for others
15. Stupid fights among friends
16. Having to learn to sleep alone
17. Sexual addiction
18. Being unartistic
19. Being afraid of the LSAT
20. Boys being cruel to my friends
21. Being afraid of substances
22. Being afraid to let go
23. Regretting
24. Looking back
25. Being unselfish when I should have been selfish
26. Being forgiven when I should have been merciless
27. Being restrained when I should have been wild
28. Being cruel
29. Being dishonest
30. Compromising too often
31. 12 months of the Bush administration
32. Fall semester
33. Giving up too early
34. Holding on to people who want to go
35. Forgetting to write Sara
36. Forgetting to tell Lindsay how beautiful she is
37. Forgetting to tell Scott how much I appreciate him
38. Forgetting to tell Seth how great he is
39. Forgettin to tell mikale how amazing of a friend she is
40. A time before The Blow
41. Missing Leila’s shows
42. Missing concerts that I wanted to see
43. Not travelling
44. Needing someone else to complete me
45. Apologizing for being different
46. Trying too hard
47. Not reading enough
48. Not dancing enough
49. Not writing enough
50. Not creating enough

It’s almost December now.
Since when?
Time rushes like sand, and like sand
Sticks in hair, teeth, skin
Hides in corners of suitcases,
shoes, ear canals.

Well, yes, you were on the beach once.
Sun burned sky, skin penny orange.
Water wet. Sand grit.
Skin. Skin. Skin.

Granules and memories
Like mud
In the carry-on baggage
You’ve yet to clean out.

Our bodies
Suspended in water
Pressing together,
Insoluble solution.

I fell for
August’s awkward coppered airs.
Perfect copper sunset turns to rust.
Red, orange, green, white. Metal, dust.

August painted verdant rings around skin.
We were painted, still
Drenched water, pigment, color
Dissolving, insoluble, solving.

Skin.
I fell for it then.
Days passing like sand,
Tracking mud memories through,
August, September, October, November.
It’s almost December now.

Villanelles are stupid hard. Look them up yourself.

In time you will see this is the way
That time will pass and death will catch
And light will fade away

There is order to the pendulum’s sway
That rocks slow, slower until stopped with a snatch
In time you will see this is the way.

For now, we may topple onto grass and lay
Look up at clouds and watch
And light will fade away

There is much time to then and we may
Knock longer at life’s door before checking the latch
In time you will see this is the way

It’s useless now to grieve and pray
We will cry, beg, scream, and scratch
And light will fade away

Go gentle toward the end of the day
Worry not about the fallen that you could not catch
In time you will see this is the way
And light will fade away.

Ack, a little bit late. I lose.

A quatrain is a four line poem, with any rhyme scheme. I’ll use ABAB.

Grace cannot expect too much of beauty,
Rhythm cannot expect too much of rhyme,
We, though, fall back on our faults and duty,
We expect too little every time.

This form is a parody of a villanelle. It’s not supposed to make sense. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only these words.a

Your honesty lends a pallor to this place.
Your honesty lends a pallor to this place.
Across the table, coffee and cigarettes.
Across the table, coffee and cigarettes.
Honesty lends coffee and a pallor to this table.
Across your place, the cigarettes.

I try to seem brilliant.
I try to seem brilliant.
I laugh when appropriate.
I laugh when appropriate.
Laugh when I try to seem brilliant.
Appropriate, I.

Who are we reading? Nietzsche?
Who are we reading? Nietzsche?
It is Kafka, and I am an idiot.
It is Kafka, and I am an idiot.
Who is Kafka? Nietzsche is an idiot.
And are we reading it? I am.

Nietzsche and cigarettes, appropriate.
Honesty is brilliant. I am reading your laugh.
Kafka, who is I, lends this table a pallor.
I seem an idiot when I try to.
Across the place and to coffee.
Are we it?

Open verse haiku is a form of poetry where you string several haikus together to create a longer poem…

She. She steps. She. She.
She walks in cat-strides, slow sway,
Can’t help but follow.

Step. Step slow. Step. Step.
Her beat is mesmerizing,
I’ll memorize her.

Slow. Slow touch. Slow. Slow.
Her skin is honey-sweet, to
Taste, moves honey-slow.

Touch. Touch soft. Touch. Touch.
Her skin is aching and my
Touch alone heals her.

Soft. Soft kiss. Soft. Soft.
I chase her cadence, rhythm
Found with thousandth kiss.

I wish that touch could make things better. The piece I’m dancing in, “Fall When We Must, Catch When We Can” is about nurturing, about how touch can stabilize and make peace. When I dance, in order to make my movements believable, I repeat to myself over and over again, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, catch me please…”

The moments when I catch a fellow dancer, when my hands keep them from hitting the earth, feel so good to me even though it’s all fake. I wish that the same thing worked in life. I imagine myslef, all people really, as healers, and simply placing hands on someone can heal all things. It used to work for me when I was small… small touches would sustain me from day to day, would remind me that I was deeper than just skin, flesh, body.

There are so many people right now that I wish I could take into my arms, to fix. If I could show him how much I care for him… If I could make him touch earth again… If I could show her that she’s not alone. If I could show her that she’s beautiful. If my hands could do these things I’d have nothing to ask for.. But touch is not enough. Words are not enough. Dedication, honesty, commitment, loyalty… You can give everything and sometimes all things really need is time.