I'm trying to really start working on "my novel" which seems like a horribly pretentious thing to say I'm doing. I've always been a bit shy of showing my work, and it seems kind of arrogant to think I have that much to say that anyone else will want to hear. But, I talk A LOT and people still like me, so maybe this is kind of like that ;) Anyway, I think that as an English major, I am doomed to eventually attempt this, so better sooner than later. In consequence, my poetry may slow down (or speed up as I have something bigger to procrastinate on) but, I want to go back and work on some of the poems I talked about but never finished. Like the stuff from the Bach concert. And the feminist one (I really want to see where that ends up). So hopefully August will be full of book writing and poetry.


To start it off, here's last month's poem. The word was miscommunication:

Miscommunication
Between my lips and your ears
words war their way through
a no-mans-land of mines and booby traps
their disfigured bodies, unrecognizable,
whisper through death, caught in their throats,
the lies they’ve learned on the way.

Then I wrote a poem using a list of somebody's 10 most beautiful words in the English language (chimes, dawn, golden, hush, lullaby, luminous, melody, mist, murmuring, tranquil). Pretty words are kind of boring to work with, so it isn't my favorite. Also, they are kind of similar. Boring. But I wrote it because I challenged myself to, and it turned out alright after all:

Poetic
In the golden hush of dawn
before the waking wind
sweeps away the final chimes
of midnight lullabies
the luminous fingers of dawn stroke
languid latitude lines, strumming
the murmuring melody of mist
as it presses itself into the tranquil earth.

Next, a poem using Edward Sheldon's ugliest words in the English language (funeral parlor,galluses, housewife, intelligentsia). Which was the second part of my challange.  I figure if you can make a poem out of pretty words, so what? But ugly words, that's something. And I like this one a lot better :)

Prose
He walked, head down, shoulders slouched
into the funeral parlor on the fourteenth of May.
The only thing about his person that did not succumb
to the day's gravity were his pants,
prosaically supported by old, brown galluses.
She was just a housewife, and he was no intelligentsia
but the picture of him, stooping over her
worn and hollow was the most perfect thing
the photographer had ever snapped
(but was not included in the next day's paper
Due to the stunning indiscretion of a Notable socialite).

And life has been really good lately. I'm still getting better, still finding my way towards the happiness I used to find so easily. But I've turned another corner and it's been huge for me. I keep thinking, in a way, that this is it. That I'm finally back, and it feels like that this time too. Partially because, I think, I know I'm not going back to what I was. You can't. Your physical body turns over, new cells replacing the old, so that you can never be literally the person you were, even when you are "all grown up." So instead, I'm finding the things I used to love and putting them together with the lessons I've learned about life and together, it's making life beautiful again. Beautiful in a way that makes me catch my breath at random moments because it just hits me how beautiful that moment is. I'm glad.

But whenever I feel happier, whenever I move a little further on, I miss Angel a little more again. I've been thinking of her a lot this weekend, and some of the memories that felt like they were fading came back, really strong. So I have a weird combination of the sadness of missing her and the gladness that even if it makes me sad, I still have her. But the poem that came out about her today is kind of sad, but it's something I think about. So here that is:

Bereavement
Every death is yours.
The tombstones crumbling
with a hundred years decay
are memorials of your passing.
Obituaries in daily papers mark
Your sweetness, missed.
Even deaths, splashed across
wide screens of make believe
Are yours.
You die with the day at every sun set.
And I love every death for you.

Anyway, Now I should really do some book-work. See you later!