While I Wait

I'm waiting to hear back from a professor about whether I got into his poetry workshop or not. I'm also waiting for sleep. It's all very tiring.

But I figured since I'm waiting, and since you're waiting by extension, that I should give you something while you sit with me. This is a very very old poem. And at the time I was in love with it because I could use it for a bunch of things (which meant I didn't have to write a new poem). It seemed to go over well with others #kanyeshrug. Consider it a token of our friendship:

Cloudy Walking

There are clouds outside,

Obviously,

That are pushed across the sky

by wind, maybe

but it's almost like I could run through a

meadow

Throw up my trusty grappling hook

and latch onto a cloud for the ride.

The sky could be blinding blue

or not ~ it could storm

it doesn't matter to me, really at all

just that my face was numb with water vapor

and intangible fluff,

Just that I was high up, above all of it,

lying down on the edge of the field,

and not falling into a valley,

That the world could stretch out underneath

like the bottom of a glass-bottom boat

and trees became easy to believe I am stepping on them.

I want to cloudily walk above it all

on the glass of my glass-bottom boat

so I can rest my grappling hook and

pull out my captain's hat and

take the wheel of my cloud.

So it could float, lonely if it likes,

above it all and into everything more,

Daffodils to morning glories to moonwort,

I would commandeer it through the night and day

Until it fell apart around me

and let me rise down to my meadow.

Set down on my back

under nothing and it all

stars for eyes and a moon,

the sky can fall above me.

I'll follow my cloud,

cloudily walking through the stalks and around the flowers,

following that cloud through the black and the gray, until my meadow finished,

cloudy walking out to morning.

As you can see, it's very awkward and dull. I feel like this is me showing you embarrassing baby photos of myself.

Look At My Fucking Clichés

A Sestina on Religion, Smoking, and Winter Wind

“I like this place because it’s empty and wild”

she said while taking a long breath out of her fag

pulling the smoke in deep to hold within her throat

like an internal necklace fingered for warmth and solace,

glittering, as she considered the immaculate conception.

It fell apart as she decided virginity was a human error

Which she figured, to think of was also an error

for it was not meant to be questioned within the wild

glades of the man-made religion, within the conception

of our own purity and innocence. She thumbed out the fag

on the concrete railing. “Is religion something to seek solace

in?” she posed to me, “Or should the prayers stay in our throats

To keep them warm?” her scarf fell from her throat

revealing the sensual weakness that was the God-made error

of all humanity. She continually sought her solace,

this girl, within the bizarre intelligence of Wilde

or within the trailing smoke of a poetic fag,

and with the belief in human conception

Being, at its base, fallible. It began with conception,

when the fetus feels out life in the echoes of its throat,

reverberating inside the womb. She pulled out another fag

and struck the match against the rail. It was her error

believing this world, outside her, was wild

yet so easily dismantled for her so that she may find solace

Among her own thoughts and the breakdown of this world. Solace

is not so easily found when sought and she strayed back to the immaculate conception

that everyone was in their own tidy box, while the cold air made her heart beat wild

in her throat

and suddenly she was aware of her error

as she flicked that fag.

At one time she had used the word fag

lightly as she sought solace

in the everyday use of labels, degrading the world into a train of error

breaking it down into the simple conception

that everyone and everything was detestable. She caught her scarf back to her throat

and the smoke flickered on the air and the wild

Of the moment. And as she pulled out another fag, repeating the same action and rethinking the conception

that all humans desire is solace, the icy wind caught her thoughts by the throat

and she felt the error of the world disappear, and it become again empty and wild.

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It's always strange when you reach that point in daily life where going through the motions has replaced actual living - it's like you've been zoning out for so long, you're doing it professionally, all the time, without realizing. It's stranger still when you look around your room or the places you walk and see that you're not seeing the details, the contours or the colors anymore. And it's not like you can shock yourself out of it or that you can simply throw yourself deeper and better into your works and passions. I think, what it takes, is the witnessing of a moment - a piece of good writing, a gorgeous picture, careful words from a friend, a universal configuration, a sign - to get you back to where you need to go. This place isn't point B, it's where you were speeding and raging to previously, before you forgot yourself.

Then again, I could just be full of shit and this only applies to me.

Professing

I spoke to my poetry class professor today about my "strengths and weaknesses" when it comes to poetry writing. I still think this is a funny concept - breaking down poetry, which is essentially the cheesy art I do in my room, by myself, with the door locked, into a series of improvable situations. I mean, I know how to do that with dance, like if your arm is limp you straighten it, if you're not on beat you better get on beat fast, etc. Poetry always seemed, and still slightly seems, to be untouchable and basically dredged up subconscious thrown on a page. Am I completely wrong?

Within Without

What next, I said

What next for us in the huge wide world

Out past the highways of this country, over the oceans, and through all the loves this universe could muster up to trip us

What next.

We’ve conquered nothing

Here

But it’s been picked over

By far defter, daintier hands than ours

Torn unintentionally by those who came before

We should pick up and go

We can claim the dark parts in our souls later

While we bum our hazy shady way through the

Byways of this world

We’ll find ourselves, I’m sure.

Within us or without, we’re there

Ready to be found later

When the time is right

When there’s less to be seen because so much

Has been explored

When we’re sitting in front of the TV,

So ready to let go of those memories and that

Animas that made us run

Will we realize the unsayable truth of our souls.

That there is no lesson of life besides this one:

We eventually forgot to look for the significance.