listening to music...

(this "poem" is the result of a very interesting experience i had the other night. I was sitting in an appartment with some guys in a band, who just started picking up their guitars, pedal boards, and keyboard/synthesizer, to jam. Sitting on the couch, the musical energy was palpable. I dug out my journal and raced to jot down these lines while they were all playing, wordlessly. It was a creative surge that is rare for me, in the company of others, much less in a kind of collaboration with other "art"...)

"a woman-instrument"

he told me once
that his bass
was sexed like a woman-
all sleek hair,
satin fingers,
concave back
and graceful neck
with a hollow
where her voice
laughed out
melodies

the woman
moved with long strong fingers
with strangled hair
and creased cloth
pouring over top
of her slender frame

with the calloused, scratched
touch, she sings,
with the animal smell
of a man,
or so many men.
all of them converging
in one fountain head
all of them surging
with dark hair
that blends with night sky

and long fingers
and varying degrees
of attentiveness or indifference
and always
the bass-girl
finds herself reconcilled to a corner
to a station between
wall and books
where she starts again

to glitter
beneath the dust

she catches light upon her strings
and the men circle
their fingers hungry
and the picks pull
at her taughtness,
smoothness--

can you hear her music
play
again?

The product of a stagnant class is a beautiful poem?

"Ripples"
("Sight Out of the Window")


Wave the glass of ages-
Magnolia leaves ripple
with wind and with time.
I can see blocks of color,
on a body,
run up and back,
catch, release, catch.
It is him.
whom I have waited days (or was it weeks?
months?
years?) to see:
Tense with the dreading
of his profile, his walk, his voice--
He whom I once loved
and do
possibly
still love.
Though there can be no "with" or "in" (love)-
for he is elsewhere, outside,
Running, in waving glass frames,
loving
her.

And I am here
on the inside
with someone new
someone kinder, gentler, more beautiful.
With whom I am not "in" love.
(yet?)
but whose long frame fits mine,
curved to my curve,
and not rigid,
divided,
seperated,
like windowpanes (pains) of glass.
but, twisting and touching --him to me--
I ripple under blankets,
(clear and fragile)
sigh with pleasure,
and
drop
deeply
into
sleep.

I'M LIVING NOW. (It is so Petty. (Is it so Petty?))

"Somewhere, somehow somebody
Must have kicked you around some
Tell me why you wanna lay there
And revel in your abandon
Listen it don't make no difference to me baby
Everybody's had to fight to be free
You see you don't have to live like a refugee"
-tompetty





A return to my third (gasp) year of college, to the life of the mind, to a place full of people as young, vigorous, stupid, inexperienced, heartbroken, depressed, horny, excited, and lost as I am... Ah. I do love school.

From the first day of kindergarten, something about the first day(s) of school has given me a feeling that could be a direct translation of that very word...a garden of children. A garden for children. (It's not Herr Whitney...don't get upset with my translation).
It is the starting over that I love, it is the wind-in-your-hair, driving-too-fast, musty-gluey-smell-of-books, the touch of paper, the glide of pen, the gleam of educators in their relentless enthusiasm. Le sigh. I love all that is the intellectual arena of this country (the world?). I love the tides of bodies across campus, everyone pooling in and out of Georgian buildings, gates of brick and column.

It is a relief that this freshness is still here. Going to a small (I repeat: small) liberal arts university has its negative social ramifications, and the imperfection, collision, heartbreak of my life to date certainly was reason enough for my apprehension at returning to school. But, surprise(!!!), I don't have to run away, burn bridges, be a refugee...

Memories too are experiences of the present moment. And the present moment seems to explode in flora and fauna everywhere I turn. Old friends, new lovers, lovely asthetics, nature, art, words, creases of human flesh, calling of names, baking of sun, aching feat, heaving sighs...that which is HERE, NOW...and gone, fleeting, flux, winding, running, flowing, stretching, contracting, moving, moving, moving...


So, here we are. We can be no where else. Cheers!

bye bye, love, i'll catch you later/ got my left foot down on my accelerator/ and my rear-view mirror torn off/ cause i ain't never lookin' back...

I just vacuumed half of Carolina Beach out of my car, loaded it with shtufff (a.k.a. my wardrobe/bookshelf...the bare essentials, of course), washed it, gassed it, and collapsed into this chair. I am gross/sweaty. ...whatev.

So.....back to school? Hmm, here goes nothing: 18 credits*, new boy toy, new advisor, independent study, 239492340972 books (and almost as many papers), lots of ideas for poems that i haven't written, an aspiration to learn how to play the guitar, a half-finished philosophy book, a sneaking suspician that coffee is going to become a part of my routine again, concert tickets, my loving amigos, a few people i'd rather not see for the rest of my life, and a new obsession with crafting my own clothes...

phew! I love school. And as my new "clothing line" boldly proclaims: THE WORLD IS AS IT SHOULD BE. Relax, live the moment, be the experience. If I never make it to Fredericksburg tomorrow, I am living mindfully right now. And..............GO!




*subject to change, upon the return of my good sense.

quite an offer... (an incredible offer in plain sight).

Vision Two

Vision Two


Night falls with worry
and my sleep is fitful,
fatigue erasing consciousness
i see her face
below a swadle of pink
she was my first mentor, whose
soft, urgent voice replaced mine own.
she has lost a baby
I feel sad
and know not what to say

Vision One

"Vision One"
(Concentration camp of sorts. I am searching for my dead grandmother, Isabel Blackwell Roberts.)


i have fallen from my family
and eat dust on the road
where is she, many strangers?
where is the matriarch
for whom I pine?
I have lost her (not to death)
but to the negligence
of humankind.
the vision is of a decade I never saw
(in this lifetime).
i comb the graceful
osterich-feathered hats
and the dingy stalls.
where are you,
blood that runs in my veins?
(they say every dream-person is the self.)

The (Moon Brought) Visions.

I have written a rough sequence of poems over the last couple of mornings (as yet, they are under construction still) that stem from very fantastical dreams I have had as of late. For the duration of the full moon and during its late waxing, and early waning, I took incredibly vivid, complicated, emotional journeys in my sleep--not all of them pleasant.

To give vent to these psychological wrestling matches, I decided to make notes on them each morning, and slowly convert the notes to verse. I entitle them "The Visions" and as yet, their final number is undetermined. But I will publish them here, prefaced with mini-plot-explanations, simply as a way to make them more docile, less haunting visions for me. And if you peruse them, dear reader, all the better...


pale moon over many nights
has brought me visions
with the twilight--
visions of its pink ghost
rising on clouds,
of the flat blue
and the svelte pines
framing my night mares
(the marring of my nights).

chicken scratch.

An experience rather than an interpretation? (What one might call writer's block.)

my writing has taken the form of a lot of verbal correspondence as of late. this has been an interesting time for me, where i have attempted to write less...as words can sometimes be a classification of things, making things objective and otherly from the self. It is better not to have this seperation of self and other. For, no self really exists as seperate from the world at large. Or, so the Buddha says.

I have been reflecting a lot on my dreams lately (which have been wild and fantastical, very vivid, complex, colorful, and long). I am trying to experience them entirely first...only describing them after some lapse of time. It is difficult.

So, I have not produced much poetry lately, to my chagrin. And i am trying not to resist this lull in creativity, as it is a natural part of flux and therefore of life. This is counterintuitive (or maybe not counterintuitive, but rather counter-whatever-i-think-of-as-my-intuition-that-is-actually-socialization). Difficult, nonetheless. Also, it saddens me to have somewhat abandoned my blog (a convenient excuse for which is that I have been working alot lately...and cultivating a new and unexpected friendship.).

Anyhow, patient reader. I have been taking a lot of pictures lately, as a new experiencing of my life, rather than an interpretation of it. (As per the written word). So, here are the fruits of my non-labor:

You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello.

My very favorite professor is starting a new chapter at another university. To him I say this:

We will miss you, collegue, mentor, friend, fellow soul who dwells in the life of the mind. Happy trails. Visit often. There are not enough thank-yous for the inspiration, guidance, and beauty you have shared. Here's to the way of the world: flux, impermanence, insecurity, and change!

Hear the man sign off in his own words:
http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/

I wanted to add something of a peaceful vantage point on this event and all others in life. I found a few very appropriate, inspiring and yet sobering passages from Alan W. Watts' book The Wisdom of Insecurity:

On the subject of the beauty of poetry:
“There is more in this beauty than the succession of melodious images, and the theme of dissolution does not simply borrow its splendor from the things dissolved. The truth is rather that the images, though beautiful in themselves, come to life in the act of vanishing. The poet takes away their static solidity, and turns a beauty which would otherwise be only statuesque and architectural into music, which, no sooner than it is sounded, dies away. The towers, palaces, and temples become vibrant, and break from the excess of life within them. To be passing is to live; to remain and continue is to die. ‘Unless a grain of corn fall into the ground and die, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.’
For the poets have seen the truth that life, change, movement, and insecurity are so many names for the same thing. Here, if anywhere, truth is beauty, for movement and rhythm are of the essence of all things lovable. In sculpture, architecture, and painting the finished form stands still, but even so the eye finds pleasure in the form only when it contains a certain lack of symmetry, when, frozen in stone as it may be, it looks as if it were in the midst of motion.”