Poem: the 20 best dressed women

Inspired by The 20 Best Dressed Women of 2014.

The Rules:  Each line is composed of words from one paragraph.  The words must stay in the order they appear.  I can use whatever punctuation I want.  (I changed one proper noun to a pronoun.)

Do Something That Scares You: Voice Memos

Photo from here.

There are so many things I never did or have not yet done because I'm afraid.  By afraid, I don't mean seriously in fear of death/harm/destruction (i.e. I have never swam in a shark cage and don't intend to) . . . I mean fearful of what other people might thing, of not doing something perfectly, of being ridiculed, or feeling self-conscious or unsure if I would succeed.  That sort of fear.

Often, later, I realize how silly those fears that stopped me were or realized that any negative experiences would probably have outweighed the enjoyment I might of gotten out of doing something I was interested in.  Other times, I've realized I don't care about the negative consequences or no longer value the opinion of those people I thought would judge me.  Many times, I've realized that a lot of the things I feared happening were extremely unlikely and how foolish it was for me to let those imaginings get in my way.

I like to remind myself of things I now do comfortably that at some point in my life I thought I would never be able to do.  It helps me remember that I am a capable person, that it's ok not to do something perfectly on the first try, and that I have proved many times that I can overcome fears--- especially all

Poem: there's something in my closet

A silly poem I wrote in my writing prompt group.

The prompt was "There's something in my closet . . ."


there's something in my closet

There's something in my closet
it's there, if you are not afraid to see
it's big and scary, an issue so glaring
it reflects quite badly on me.

There's something in my closet
alright, I know, don't cause such a fuss
I just need some time, and a crate of some kind
and a broom to sweep out all the dust.

There's something in my closet,
by now, I bet you've called my bluff
it's no horrible monster, no spooky night terror
it's just a load of my old stuff.

Poem: now young woman

Today I did another poem made from the standout words or phrases in a magazine article I was reading (about Ellie Goulding in the July issue of Nylon). 

now young woman

Sold out,

she needs a boost

--- still going for the real thing.

Stake out. Pursue. Statement:

"I like to keep people happy."

On Color, a writing exercise

I don't know if I have already mentioned this, but I started going to a writing group that meets twice a month.  It is a pretty informal affair, and the group is mostly made of 40+ aged novelists.  What happens at this group is we free write for about 20-30 minutes, and then do 1-2 min short writing prompts and share our creations (good and bad!)--- and this goes on for about an hour.

It is a good way to get comfortable with yourself and writing, get a little bit of feedback/support, and just practice using your imagination.  And it is usually fun and delightful to hear what hilariously bad or surprisingly good thing you and others can come up with.

Anyways, I wanted to share one of the more promising things I've produced during writing group so far.  I sometimes feel silly at the group because tonally and stylistically my stuff can be a little weird, especially when compared with the very normal, narrative-oriented, novel-esque scenes, dialogue, and prose the other writers came up with.  I often feel like I cheat on the prompt because I feel like I don't really do what it asks.

The last time I was at the group, I think the prompt was something like "Describe a color to someone who has never seen it before."  For some reason I started thinking about the colors of yellow and yellows in nature.  There are so many different colors that fall into the category of yellow.  And all those colors exist in millions of places all over the world, meaning different and the same thing in all those millions of places and contexts and experiences.  And even as those colors exist in those places and context, things change and those colors bleed into and become other colors, and even become inseparable from the other senses like smell, heat, movement etc. . . . .  so on that subject, this is what I wrote on color.

Poem: Spring, for some people

I am trying trying trying to do more writing. I ordered myself to write one poem this weekend. So of course, ever the contrarian, my brain actually made some significant progress in two story ideas I am developing for screenplays.

But I did manage to do a little poetry experiment and come up with this poem, based off of the best words from page 131 of Lucky magazine's 2014 March issue. 

Poem: highways & melodies

highways & melodies

I listen to the drum beat
and hate it

filled with the drag of chairs
televisions
the bottoms of cups and glasses

the horrible crumple of plastic
holding food

bang cabinet door, car door
distantly, again
and the next day
and the next morning
and the night

Poem: resting places

I've (finally!) been on a poetry kick.  So sorry, but there might be a bit of an onslaught of poetry posts.

This is the second draft of this poem.  I am always surprised to find just how much I modify my poems after not seeing them for months.  It is pretty interesting to seem the grow and evolve.

I kinda wanted to call this 'resting places for young bones' but that seemed to wordy and ostentatious.

Poem: t-shirts

This weekend was a true gift in many ways.  Unexpectedly there was some incredibly warm weather for December . . . 60-70 degrees!  Although I had my usual plans of being super responsible-adult productive this weekend, I decided to abandon them to take advantage of this rare opportunity to get outside during the winter.  There are not going to be many more (any more?) chances to comfortably enjoy the outdoors like this until the Spring.

Being out in nature helped me open up my mind.  I saw a very appropriate, sponsored bench that had been engraved "Sit and let your soul be nourished by nature."  Words to live by, in my experience.

Getting the Good Stuff Out of Your Scribbles

A friend of mine is doing a youtube series on writing/screen writing advice.  I emailed her a question about her writing process, and she answered with another episode!

Check it out!  I was surprisingly proud to get a shoutout on a youtube video!



(She's also really good about putting a outline of all the key points from the video in the description, so you don't forget the awesome things she is suggesting!)

Poem: a comfortable man

I was flipping through my journal today and came across most of this poem.  It was apparently inspired by an article I read about Winslow Homer's studio in Maine, but I'm not sure that I really get the connection now.  Anyways, it feels a bit unfinished but I think it has some promise.



a comfortable man

There is he
a comfortable man in the woodwork
next to bright elegant names
ensconced among the whorled, rough-hewn signs.

He leaves us just the cliff
and the wind and the rain and the wet earth
to throw over our shoulders
when the skies get white and lonely.

He looks away to the northeast of low stars.
he no longer relaxes in hives
amongst the tea leaves
whispering

Poem: dragon claw

For lent, instead of giving something up, I decided I would try to write for an hour every day.  It's ok if I just write a sentence or a couple lines as long as I legitimately tried for an hour.

Well, I've already totally failed at this.  It went pretty well (in that I did it, not in the sense that I actually wrote anything good or even coherent) for four days.  And then I took a seven day hiatus.

But I'm going to make another stab at it, and today I actually churned out another poem.

I'm still not sure about the third stanza (and maybe the first---and maybe also the fifth), but the third stanza (and the fifth, if I'm bragging) has come a long way in the past 45mins so I'm feeling pretty satisfied with myself for today.




dragon claw

I'll grab the land
furrows and all.
crumple the paper without mercy
or pull the rug out from under them?

it's too bad people won't be in on the fun
when their ugly walls fall backwards.
they'll keep their outstretched arms tucked behind their backs
because there wasn't much love for those walls anyway.

All it takes is a strong shoulder and a webbed elbow
to sweep in a fresh ocean of air.
A shock to their lungs perhaps
but at some point I have to stop waiting.

I'll have to dig the life out from under my nails.
It sounds horrific, but it's really the most natural thing in the world.

I've always wondered what lies beneath the surface.
for some reason I don't have high hopes.
Eventually,
It will be easy to blame me for everything,
just when everyone is feeling lucky with a chance to start again.

I'm no fool.

Poem: millstones

This weekend I remembered to check back on my goals for this year, and realized I have not been making too much progress lately, especially with regards to any writing!  That made me sad because I had been making some good improvements last month, so it's unfortunate that I didn't keep up the effort!

As a result of these reflections, I did a bit of jotting down notes, and want to see if I can solidify a few poems this weekend.  I've already got one!

I've been needing to blow off some steam, so this is a little bit angrier than what I usually write.  The disdain is a little potent.



"millstones"

I've had enough with him
just like all the others.

I don't believe you, he says.

That's not my affair, I say.

I don't believe you, he says.
You smile too much to know your own truth.

We're all one-trick ponies, I remind him,
and I'm a fool--- I grin in the face of fear.
Any you're good for mewing.
I tell him through the flames.

I try to show him how I'm made of marble.
but he still clings round my knees,
beaming, like a man.

one of these days I'll learn what's good for me
and I'll crush his bones
under my leaden feet.

until then, swing low, my burdens.

Poem: the eagles' nest

Started doing some poetry work today.  This one came to me only this morning.  Inspired by Baker Tower, for those who'll get that reference.

It's just a first draft, with some small revisions, for now.  I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be making some changes (I've moved the 3rd and 4th stanzas around so many times already!).  I really don't have an intellectual understanding of structure or rhythm, but I'd like to.  So I might contemplate this poem in that regard again.  I'm also still articulating to myself what this is about, and that usually means there will be stuff I'll eliminate later to achieve greater unity or I'll flesh out the imagery in a more meaningful way.  But for now . . .


"the eagles' nest"

we had a tower balcony
for one, two, three days

our eagles' nest
greyed and made of red hot stones

squinting
see just the lake
and the candied sky

the stone wasn't cold
but warm that day

we filled up space with our stretching arms
and throats
lifted higher
on budding, cherried summer breezes
hair-fluffed feathers upon our collars

barefeet
lichen against our backs

flashes of happy digital light in the night
and stars

and nothing but a fall to catch us
below

everything but holding hands
and singing "here we go round the mulberry bush"


my friends

it's all become solid
smiles in the memories

Poem: sky & hill

Preface: I wanted to experiment with a sort of weird surrealism, and telling more of a concrete narrative in my poems.  (I also can't think of what to call this. I originally was going to call it by the first line, but then though that would ruin the punch of the first line.  I don't want to call it "sky & hill" because it sounds like its some sort of myth/origin story about the sky and hills.)

"sky & hill"

Hilltop death

the closest place to the sky

pours over the globe

in its thick, blue paint.

I can taste the acrylic

like salt on my lips.

Only the breeze under my lashes

and the great, blue, nothing

And one small shape.

Far away,

a smoky flaw in the horizon.

In buttercups and star-shaped bells

time passes

the creaks of insect legs

and grass falling

under the kissing blue

My shape has become a palm,

pushing toward me out of that blue

soaring close

over great space 

A thick, wallpaper arm

molton, blue, bending

into a shoulder

a neck

a torso

Pulling the sky to the hill 

in an endless skin.

blue jewel lips part

opening its huge mouth

and engulf my face, then my head like a diadem,

swallowing,

leaving me at last with only the

recollection of the bristling wolf-hair on its shoulders.

Poem: the moon walks

Preface: I seem to be developing a thing for the moon.

"the moon walks"

the moon 

cut into the canopy

by the teeth of the gods

audacious it soldiers above us

daring to soar

sail boats

over our blue eyelids

and down the gleam on our hair

combed down backs of heads

it hums brazen

a laughing stamp of hope

walk

moon-proud

alive as rock

turn turn turn

and it is an etching

watching the

paper yellow trees
shine

sing

joy

and

crawl

Poem: tailgater

I do a lot of mental writing when I am driving.  Sometimes its the landscape or the 'alone-time' but mostly when I am driving, I know I have a captive chunk of time when it's ok to let my mind wander.  If I'm driving and musing and playing with words, I'm not procrastinating! I'm commuting!  I find it hard to make time to do creative things when I'm home because all I can think about is all the OTHER things I'm meant to be doing with my time instead.  So I'm learning to really embrace the bouts of creativity I experience when driving (although writing things down can get tricky, and pretty sloppy).

Here is a piece I put together from a bunch of recent-ish snippets I came up with while driving.  While it is a poem about driving, I don't put that all down to the fact that I was driving when I was throwing these phrases and stanzas around--- in general, I really gravitate towards stories and metaphors that pivot around images and sensations of driving, journeying, escaping or being 'in transit' versus traveling or heading to a destination.  So many of my random story/scene ideas seem to be about people driving, but not necessarily going anyplace of any particular relevance. Or are they?

Anyways: Here's "Tailgater."  It doesn't flow well and lacks focus right now.  I'm thinking of changing the title to something like: Ballad of a Tailgater or Message from a Tailgater, but I haven't found on the right combination that matches the mood of the poem.


"Tailgater"

Tailgater shines
headlight teeth.
A light at the end of the tunnel.
bright, dead destiny. wall.

I’m driving home to keep off someone’s loneliness.
That’s all I am.

I think:
he wants me to kill myself
I’m here to make way for his meaningless need
it eats up the black tunnel of space
--- cancerous mouth.

I plunge through the cake batter.
Feathers of ghost shadows scattering before me.
In the mirrors I hear the slap of handprints against the windows.
For around their feet,
the landscape bleeds into the canyon road,
as it must.

Perhaps the only way to live was to die.

And the only moon is the red stoplight.
It is in the pinholes in my windshield.
cars stand like gravestones
shells with eyes of even empty light

Meanwhile I live in cages for my time on earth
    sucking in the yellow from the sandpaper on my skin
    breathing the rough diamonds of dream pieces.

My only moon is the clock.  Patience.

I want to talk handsfree
    and drive too

And I’ve got no lover to take me places.

All along the highway
I see men throwing ropes
holding bricks of stars in their eyes.

Feel the weight in the air. in my hand.
against the metal of the motor.

Breathe in our night air that
    hovers in the morning
    mist: eat the fog with your teeth.

I turn the wiper blades off to see
if I can survive behind a
glitter mask
in my safe ice cube

I can see the halo of my lashes
falling from my face in the light of that gleaming smile.

ahead
cars hurrying crash in the night
bringing an end to those desires.

Can the Beholder be wrong?

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," we say.  And to at least some extent, this is true.

Once the objet d'art is created and displayed, the artist certain retains little control over its reception, interpretation and perhaps most importantly, its being understood.  We all blithely concede that each person who looks upon a painting with not depart from the viewing with the same impression of the piece or with duplicate feelings and emotions stirring within them.  One onlooker views the Mona Lisa or a Picasso or Warhol or Pollack and thinks it a pleasing enough work of art.  Another finds himself overcome, tears pouring down his face.  A third, while understanding the artistic merit and historical relevance, thinks the entire thing quite ugly and shudders to think of it hanging above her sofa.  [A fourth, perhaps we can imagine, just doesn't 'get' this whole art business and silently contemplates the dullness of this entire outing.]

Now, my dilemma is this: does this apply to the written word and narrative?

Generally speaking, does not an author compose his prose with a certain thesis, theme, exploration, or conclusion in mind, however general?  Is there not always something the reader is meant to realize, do, or understand?  This can be as specific as after reading this essay or watching this documentary one should ban the Twilight series from all school reading lists and libraries, or it might be as general as, after reading this novel or viewing this film, one should be reflecting upon one's attitudes toward love--- but what is fundamental is that this "it" is always there.

Therefore, one can actually leave a work of prose or narrative with an impression or understanding of the work's meaning (purpose, theme, thesis, moral etc.) that is, in fact, wrong.

As an example, I shall recount an event that inspired me upon these reflections:

I recently watched an excellent television miniseries, a costume drama that follows the life of a upper class British family from 1870s until the 1920s.  Presupposing the work's lovely cinematography, dumbfounding,  stunning costuming and cast as a given, what is most extraordinary about this series is its delicate handling of its two central characters: a rich, profoundly repressed, and jealous young man who and the young, beautiful, artistic, poor woman who naively marries him to relieve the temporary financial burdens of her father's death.  As expected the marriage quickly turns sour, fraught the inherent unsuitability of the partners, the husband's fervent but repressed passion for his wife, her deadening depression and unhappiness, the complete inability of either to communicate with the other, complicated by the husband's obsession with viewing their relationship in terms of ownership and rights--- a view that is sanctioned by society's rules, both social and legal.  Both parties do rather horrible things, but with the cards so stacked against her, I think it is fair to say, as one character does, "I rather think she has suffered more."  Regardless, the beauty of the series is its ability to keep the viewer from completely villainizing either character.  Somehow it manages to keep an adulteress and a rapist profoundly sympathetic, and as it took such pains to do so, I assume that one of the main aims of the narrative is to reveal the complexities of a failed marriage, explore the incompatibilities of people with different understandings of love, and the devastating and destructive nature of Victorian views of marriage and wifely obligation and husbands' rights.

So, I was greatly taken with this series, considered it a triumph, a great success, and consequently suggested it to my mother.

One can imagine my astonishment when she reports back to me her complete lack of sympathy for the wife.  She found her completely unsympathetic, and generally, she brings all her suffering upon herself due to her "not trying at all to make her marriage work."  I tried to counter that she does try somewhat, and that as the early months of their marriage is skipped over we can probably assume that she probably tried more and also had to recover the the sheer shock of discovering the true jealous, repressed and misunderstanding nature of her husband, and that she does acknowledge becoming both cold and apathetic but being too depressed to rise to the occasion.  I also pointed out that her husband not only generally smothers her and misunderstands her, but is completely incapable of considering her wants more than superficially (especially as they are usually counter his own), yells at her and berates her, bars her from seeing her friends and plots behind her back to essentially hoard her to himself in a secret house in the country.  My mother's response: well he buys her all those nice things, and he only does those terrible things as a reaction to her apathy and coldness.  She doesn't even try to communicate with him or make him or herself happy.

I am, in short, flabbergasted in that my mother has watched the same miniseries as I and come away with an impression not only completely opposite my own, but completely opposite what I perceived to be the fundamental message and purpose of the narrative itself.  For example, the fact that the husband attempts to win his wife over by showing her with gifts, in my book, cannot be used in his defense because the film uses those very actions to demonstrate his inability to understand her, his inability to express himself outside of the terms of ownership, and his inability to consider her desires above his own.  The man literally rapes his wife (or as he probably understands it, demands his husbandly privileges) and then buys her a ruby necklace in the morning, and cannot understand why this does not remedy their frosty relationship.

My mother's considering the wife not only unsympathetic, but completely at fault for the failed marriage due to her frigidness and lack of wifely effort is not just in opposition to mine, but is actually the incorrect way to interpret the narrative and not what it intends the viewer to conclude.  She is wrong.

But is she?  Can one have an incorrect interpretation?  This returns me to my original concern.  Is beauty in the really eye of the beholder.  My mother and I have found different and opposing 'beauties;' can they coexist?  Or can the beholder view the thing entirely wrong? In some cases of art we seem to say, "Yes of course!  You completely misread that passage!" and other times we seem to say "No, of course not.  It is up to interpretation."  Does the answer to this question lie with the artist's intent?  If the artist intends degrees of interpretation, then interpretation cannot be wrong or incorrect, but if not, and he desperately tries to steer the beholder to see things from a certain vantage point (a practice around which filmmaking and narrative I think revolves and excels in mastery) interpretations based on an extremely distorted point of view can be wrong.  Or do we hold fast to the maxim of beauty-finding being the sole privilege of the beholder?

Or more perplexing even still, if we take a leaf from the book of Oscar Wilde, is all this disagreement really just an expression of some discordant element in the worldviews of my mother and I?  Wilde writes: "It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors."  So, perhaps, neither of us wrong.

Although, I can't help but feeling, as most probably do, that when it comes down to it, I am right and that the makers of the series would agree with me.

Poem: Telemachus

Telemachus
(based on 'Ulysses' by Tennyson)

It profits little that a seasoned youth
In this moldering place, amid these sterile walls,
Does fret and idle his childhood away
Knotted in the snare of troubled lives,
which pass, and stare, and sit, and feel not me.
I will not cease my vifor; I will be
All that I will be. All things I have known
Quickly, have tired quickly, both with those
Living my life, and not; in truth, and in
Dreamy visions in thoughtless eyes looking
Away from here. I will be become a name;
For always empty for a noble cause
For much I have hungered; a weakened heart,
And substance, firmness, essence, presence
Myself amid, and dissolved in it all.
I am apart from all I have known;
And all future is a space aloft as
There through shines an unforeseen world, that shrinks
Infinitesimal, lost as I reach
How sad it is to die
To crumble untested, and never freed!
As though to sigh were breath! Sigh blowing sigh
Were all nothing, and still nothing to me
Releases breath; but every moment saves
From that eternal graveyard some lost life,
For I have not yet what I will becomes
in life past by, that which I'm not I will be:
One pulsing for of solitary will,
Kept weak by youth and age, but alive in heart
to live, to stretch, to fly, and not to fail.