a turquoise flower

Guuuuuys

Charles Simic, the 2007 poet laureate (and one of my all-time favorite poets) will be at the O'Brien Poetry Event my university holds every year.

And this year it falls on a Friday (next Friday), technically my free day were it not for my part time job.

But that's okay, I'll just come into work early and be out before the event starts--my shift is only for three hours on Fridays.

Now, the more pertinent question: what books of his should I buy?

And will I get the courage to get the book signed by him??

(I'd like his autograph, but that'd have to involve me actually interacting with him. And I am not made for such things.)

But I am so excited!!! And I almost passed out from excitement when I saw the flyer.

"The Madness Vase" 
Andrea Gibson

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness lives.

The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.
You will find a good man soon.”

The first psycho therapist told me to spend
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.

The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness
when they care more about what they give
than what they get.

The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”

The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.

The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”

But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”

My bones said, “Write the poems.”

~*~


Welp...that's it. Rejected for the second time for the Nursing program. What the hell is wrong with me? Why won't they accept me?

For some days now I had a hankering to eat eggs for breakfast. The thing is I avoid eggs as much as possible so that was definitely weird and out of the blue. I'm not allergic to eggs but once when I was really, really young I got a cold and someone told my mother that she should feed me raw eggs to starve it off. Well, there is my mother, young and naive, who heeds this advice and puts in raw eggs in my bottle. Well, I took just one sip and promptly threw up. And ever since then I couldn't look at eggs without feeling like I was going to vomit.

That's apparently over. Mom showed me how to make an omelette and I had some good eggs for breakfast today. I think I love omelettes the best because there's no yolk (or whatever the yellow part is called when you hard-boil an egg and there's the white part and the yellow part, as opposed to an omelette - which is all yellow), which I hate because I tried to eat it before to get over my aversion to eggs...and it didn't work.

I just fried it in some oil and put sour cream on top after it was done and it was very delicious.

So now the plan is to spruce it up and have it in different ways from now on. This handy link for cooking different omelettes looks interesting.

So, yeah, if anyone of you have awesome ways to eat an omelette other than just break egg, cook it, and throw it on a plate, I'm all ears.

~*~

"Love Poem"
Vicki Feaver

Sharing one umbrella,
We have to hold each other,
Round the waist to keep together,
You ask me why I'm smiling-
It's because I'm thinking,
I want it to rain forever.

"Milos"
Anis Mojgani

let us take a sack of spray paint and spray paint over the paintings
let us dance through Paris
kiss in the shadow of the Louvre
crawl inside its windows
scrawl manifestos over the canvases
write Morse code on the sculptures
roll a sleeping bag on the floor to sleep inside of
tell one another a story by flashlight
unearth everything from before
bury each other inside the other
feed grapes to the ants
light fireworks in the fists of sleeping kings
kill a monarch
break back outside, find a world to do all these same things to, up, and upon, against break the bricks
climb over them
and when the sirens scream, laugh loud

hold my hand
and run fast

run through these streets with me with a bunch of bottles
a bucket of gasoline, a mouthful of matches
a pocketful of paintings and a fresh-faced batch of policemen to chase the fires we're lighting
laugh on a shoulder of gold

and I thought that the museums were cemeteries where the dead pay the walls to hold what we have
so we can walk through what we once were
where children take their skulls to turn into gardens
to pluck for forefathers and farther stars
that on some nights resemble an armless mother praying for her arms to return

every tooth we tear from our jaw
to fling at the black-gloved riot soldiers as another shadow we are trying to lose
so every giggle is filled with lust
let us laugh this night away and I will fuck you like you were a prayer
I could save me by having my mouth around you
and I will hold you afterwards like
you were the pulpit and I was the sky
and this love that danced between that hardness
was a telephone line of holiness that those two things spoke through

take me into your heart like I was a saint
and you were a face of forgiveness
blooming in a valley destined to sink further

be a river with me
be the storm
the bend in the path
the front porch
the heat in the South
be a boot full of banjo strings
a fistful of written songs
a mouthful of chocolate dust
when they come to take us, stab them between the eyes
do not take your hand from around mine
make a fist with the other and punch spines like guilt
spit, sweat, kiss them like a grandmother
howl open-mouthed, terror love-filled
and when they come to cut our hair
and ask to hear penance come from inside of us
say with me loud and trembling but loud and clear

I have already emptied myself
I kissed regret goodbye
took the hands of another backwards angel and rode backwards into the rain
when the hangman of morrow comes to hang the sun in its daily execution
say this with me:

Sarah, we are apples
our love is an arrow
I'm unbuttoning my shirt
painting the circle over my heart
please, just shoot straight

And here is the author performing the poem. His voice is *so* enchanting.

~*~

And found this HP meme while journal-hopping.

GRYFFINDOR:
[ ] You've never done illegal drugs
[ ] You have a lot of friends
[ ] You get along with everyone
[x] You haven't made fun of someone for at least two months
[ ] You love soccer
[ ] You love baseball
[x] You're into writing and art
[ ] Favourite music genre is pop rock
[x] You believe in "innocent until proven guilty" theory
[ ] One of your favourite colours is red or gold
[x] You get good grades at school
[ ] One of the worst things you can do is lie
[ ] You plan on going to college/university
Total: 4

( Read more... )

RESULT: Ravenclaw

Happy April Fool's Day! And National Poetry Month!

If you've hung around here for more than a year, you already probably know I like to (try) to post one poem a day for the entire month of April. (I say try because I've never actually posted a poem for EACH day - more like the majority of them.) And it looks like this year, I won't reach that milestone either because I'm totally not prepared for April or for posting one poem every day. (I'm never prepared for anything, really...)

So this year, you'll get a poem a day when I remember/stumble upon a poem by chance (or find some of those other poems I stumbled on and never posted for the prior National Poetry months). It's really the most I can offer at this point. :D

"The Planned Child"
Sharon Olds

I hated the fact that they had planned me, she had taken
a cardboard out of his shirt from the laundry
as if sliding the backbone up out of his body,
and made a chart of the month and put
her temperature on it, rising and falling,
to know the day to make me - I would have
liked to have been conceived in heat,
in haste, by mistake, in love, in sex,
not on cardboard, the little x on the
rising line that did not fall again.

But when a friend was pouring wine
and said that I seem to have been a child who had been wanted,
I took the wine against my lips
as if my mouth were moving along
that valved wall in my mother's body, she was
bearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and then
bearing down, pressing me out into
the world that was not enough for her without me in it,
not the moon, the sun, Orion
cartwheeling across the dark, not
the earth, the sea - none of it
was enough, for her, without me.

It's very hot over here- ninety degrees. I hate hot.

words come out of your mouth,
what do they say?
I have no clue. 

all I can do is gaze
at the depths of your eyes
and the smirking curves of your lips
 
you seem happy
and I seem giddy
is it because of one another
that we're happy?

seems strange
that you can make me feel this way
and that I have the same effect on you

feelings, like words,
are fleeting
they flutter from one heart to another

makes a person so unsure of them
it's frightening to experience
but then you stop talking
do you know my thoughts? 

and you gaze longingly at me,
and your eyes, which have words of their own
tell me to trust
and not be afraid

they have a silent language
and are unlike words
shoving and obtrusive 

they're sincere and genuine
and trustworthy to the brim
and come from the heart

the heart and the eyes have a language
all their own
trustworthy
and genuine

they touch your heart
gently and shyly
and bring you into paradise

[4/6/07]

If I were to touch the moon,
My lips would be filled with golden magic
And the kiss they'd place upon you
Would fill you with magic
So, you'd be able to touch the stars and universe with me
And we'd create a little paradise
of our own
from the dust of the black soot
that fills infinity
and cloaks you and me

 
our paradise would be in the skies
and would fill the whole universe
from corner to corner
but we'd be hidden in the protecting arms of heaven and earth
so no one could see us and persuade us
we'd make our own paradise
way up in the clouds
and, boy, I'd stay happy
with you
forever
tucked away in the farthest corners of the universe
looking in, but never getting gazed at back

 [4/6/07]

I don't know the meaning of 'I'm sorry,' anymore
I don't know how to repent for my sins
My mind keeps running in circles
Around and around
The same concept of you forgiving and me screwing

I feel guilt
And I promise to abolish my wrong doings
But there always happens to be a next time
And I'm never afraid of what might happen,
If one day, you aren't there to forgive

It would be my fault, I would know
But I would be angry at you
Because you should know,
That the things I do
Are never gonna be perfect
And I need you there
Because you're as perfect as an angel

And, somehow, I keep thinking
With you around,
I might get to Heaven

***********
*12/6/06*
***********