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4/25/06 04:38 pm - Back from the grave...
Hello again! It's been a while... and maybe a lot has changed. Here's a poem I wrote that I think is pretty cool. Read it if you're interested, it's really long, but it's not sad. I know, surprised me too. :)
"Optimistic Accounts of Unfortunate Observations"
to daughters of dead mothers
and their questions
they carry,
incapable of and insisting on
answering themselves,
finding their mothers
more than ghosts,
fixing things,
and believing themselves
when they say, things
have been fixed.
to my closest friend
drunk again
splashed on a couch under the white face of a clock
stuck at 5:30 for now
turning things over and righting them
on a page in a notebook
that won't make any of it simpler.
and she's lived through too much screaming
--- just because she's strong enough
doesn't mean she should be
doesn't make it right---
her shoulders strong enough to hold
worlds for people
who don't deserve her
to backseats of cars
and frontseats
and beds and couches and bathroom floors
for teaching us new ways
to ruin our lives
and call it religion
for taking our picture
and putting it up on the screen
to be replaced
and giving us T-shirts afterward
that say we survived
for giving us permanent
souvenirs
to shoulders and sun
to spring and kissing and music and skin
and blue skies for lying
as well as we do
to nicotine night hours
to open eyes
to things that make a difference
to tall tales and bitten nails
to every phenomenon
and to being young and meaning it
and to not being sure
to every poem that's ever been written
for the decades they've consumed
for their admission of their own hopelessness
and for not letting that interfere
for not being afraid to say out loud
that something matters
to everyone who's ever believed
and been wrong
to the startling fact that every person
who has ever felt alone
really isn't.
and to everyone afraid of turning thirty
and to everyone going to Hell
to anyone who's wasted their life
worried about wasting it
(or writing poems)
to anyone who's learned to lose their minds
in a productive way
and the rest of us
who haven't
to the most prolific poets
bound by what they do
to scribbling spiral notebooks full of
clever turns of phrase
failing to immortalize
whatever decision about the truth
reluctantly revealing
just how lost someone can be
to those of us
who have just learned the word silence
and still don't know how to use it
and to those of us learning the importance of peace
to the individual
to finding peace in knowing
you'll never really learn
and seeing peace itself as a kind of surrender
of things like knowing
needing
and needing to know
lifelong searches
lifelong struggles
lives
to girls like me stumbling onto something
to end the discomfort
running currents through every hour
to finding comfort in anything
at all
to soft voices, hard kisses
to boys with eyes like magicians,
with motives to match
boys behind drum sets and cigarettes
boys making history
and making girls do stupid things
making all the magic they can with hands
that will soon belong to men; and start
building the clocks that struck midnight
on their long season
of clear eyes, mischief, chances, faith
a freshness some men keep
through time, under the dust and weight and regret of age
when some men
are given a choice
to those men
and those women
who were never marked by death
who are still young in an impossible sense
that was always impossible
and always whole
to language, to fear, to the chain-of-events
to screenplays, to mind games, to changing the world
to no boundaries
and no sleep
to Alycia
to giving whatever you can back to the world
that made these things
to surround you
even if it means making every piece of paper
a last-minute poem
a poem, a tribute, a message-in-a-bottle
a chorus, a whisper, a brave and naked shout
to all the lessons you should have learned
to ten-page poems
to needs and to needing and to reasonable doubt
and to sacrifice for knowing better
to rights and wrongs and poetic justice
and to Love for not giving a fuck
to every word ever written and crossed out twice
and to where those words go
to wait
to chemical dependence
to closest friends
(to no relation, to kidding yourself)
to the women who break clocks instead
with words like Wait, Nothing, and Love
and stand beneath them
women who plummet out of paradise
for being hungry
sometimes landing on their faces
before rising to their feet
"Optimistic Accounts of Unfortunate Observations"
to daughters of dead mothers
and their questions
they carry,
incapable of and insisting on
answering themselves,
finding their mothers
more than ghosts,
fixing things,
and believing themselves
when they say, things
have been fixed.
to my closest friend
drunk again
splashed on a couch under the white face of a clock
stuck at 5:30 for now
turning things over and righting them
on a page in a notebook
that won't make any of it simpler.
and she's lived through too much screaming
--- just because she's strong enough
doesn't mean she should be
doesn't make it right---
her shoulders strong enough to hold
worlds for people
who don't deserve her
to backseats of cars
and frontseats
and beds and couches and bathroom floors
for teaching us new ways
to ruin our lives
and call it religion
for taking our picture
and putting it up on the screen
to be replaced
and giving us T-shirts afterward
that say we survived
for giving us permanent
souvenirs
to shoulders and sun
to spring and kissing and music and skin
and blue skies for lying
as well as we do
to nicotine night hours
to open eyes
to things that make a difference
to tall tales and bitten nails
to every phenomenon
and to being young and meaning it
and to not being sure
to every poem that's ever been written
for the decades they've consumed
for their admission of their own hopelessness
and for not letting that interfere
for not being afraid to say out loud
that something matters
to everyone who's ever believed
and been wrong
to the startling fact that every person
who has ever felt alone
really isn't.
and to everyone afraid of turning thirty
and to everyone going to Hell
to anyone who's wasted their life
worried about wasting it
(or writing poems)
to anyone who's learned to lose their minds
in a productive way
and the rest of us
who haven't
to the most prolific poets
bound by what they do
to scribbling spiral notebooks full of
clever turns of phrase
failing to immortalize
whatever decision about the truth
reluctantly revealing
just how lost someone can be
to those of us
who have just learned the word silence
and still don't know how to use it
and to those of us learning the importance of peace
to the individual
to finding peace in knowing
you'll never really learn
and seeing peace itself as a kind of surrender
of things like knowing
needing
and needing to know
lifelong searches
lifelong struggles
lives
to girls like me stumbling onto something
to end the discomfort
running currents through every hour
to finding comfort in anything
at all
to soft voices, hard kisses
to boys with eyes like magicians,
with motives to match
boys behind drum sets and cigarettes
boys making history
and making girls do stupid things
making all the magic they can with hands
that will soon belong to men; and start
building the clocks that struck midnight
on their long season
of clear eyes, mischief, chances, faith
a freshness some men keep
through time, under the dust and weight and regret of age
when some men
are given a choice
to those men
and those women
who were never marked by death
who are still young in an impossible sense
that was always impossible
and always whole
to language, to fear, to the chain-of-events
to screenplays, to mind games, to changing the world
to no boundaries
and no sleep
to Alycia
to giving whatever you can back to the world
that made these things
to surround you
even if it means making every piece of paper
a last-minute poem
a poem, a tribute, a message-in-a-bottle
a chorus, a whisper, a brave and naked shout
to all the lessons you should have learned
to ten-page poems
to needs and to needing and to reasonable doubt
and to sacrifice for knowing better
to rights and wrongs and poetic justice
and to Love for not giving a fuck
to every word ever written and crossed out twice
and to where those words go
to wait
to chemical dependence
to closest friends
(to no relation, to kidding yourself)
to the women who break clocks instead
with words like Wait, Nothing, and Love
and stand beneath them
women who plummet out of paradise
for being hungry
sometimes landing on their faces
before rising to their feet
Rent- "La Vie Boheme"
giddy
super-ecstatic
pessimistic
and tired