Two Poems and Me

[greenstorm]

I just had a post typed out. I was writing in it about how I've been writing a lot, and how I write when I'm seeking connection. I've been feeling isolated and lonely lately-- I'm not so much wanting for physical presence, though I'm spending a lot less time in physical conact with people than I have for a long while, as for conversation. I've a couple particularly conversational friends in my life right now who have rekindled that flame in me. I don't have time to feed it. It's hard. I think some of that need was alleviated in Ecology class where our plant walks were like long really good conversations that basically were about ecosystems, but ecology is over and now we are in the midst of Surveying which is completely different.

I had written that out in less labrynthine sentences. I had added two poems, which I will re-add on the bottom of this. Then I got excessively annoyed with my N key sticking and I fixed it, but lost the post in the meantime.

Here are the poems:


Arrival

During our first few dates, we
scribbled our confessions on paper,

sending them like fast-forward
letters back and forth across the table.

Then you relented and taught me sign-
language, demonstrating how "like"

is the drawing forth of an invisible
string from the centre of your chest

like a loosened thread, freed from
the constraining fabric of your body,

while "love" is the crossing of
both arms in an act of self-defence

and a warning, or simply that "X"
which marks the point of arrival

upon the very treasure map of you.

Cyril Wong


Grammar

Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she’s a conjugated verb.
She’s been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We’re all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we’ve all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.

Tony Hoagland

This morning I was in a terrible mood, but school fixed it. It usually does-- I'm just too interested to feel bad. It was ATV class, which intimidated me, but I did great and had tons of fun. It didn't even rain until the last hour of class. Then I learned that kindelingboy has been on an ATV. You know, so much of what I learn and enjoy has so little to do with anything my friends really know much about; that makes my friends interesting because we don't share the same knowledge but... well, there's that isolation theme coming up again. It's a different thing altogether to be speaking of an experience your conversational partner has never had. You aren't reminding and comparing; you're painting the whole picture from the largest detail to the smallest.

And tonight I'm tired just thinking about it. I slept for nearly ten hours last night. The previous two nights I'd only slept for four hours. Today I spent all day on a small course on the ATC or in the bush-- lots of turning, which means lots of moving my body around and leaning. Monday I'm gonna feel like someone was beating my hips and thighs with a lead pipe while tonight I'm only exhausted. I feel triumphant, thoug-- and totally unable to structure this post in a meaningful way.

That means it's food time and bedtime soon. Be well.