Observation #18, 11/29: Almost, in Two Parts

(Theme: almost)

I used to go to church with my head hung low and arms crossed over my heart
you were a light for eleven months before you cast off playing a part
I convinced myself to belong to a boy until a week parted our ways
Almost only really counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

#

The notes of a familiar song drifting through panes of glass
half intelligible, words muddled somewhere between
melting point and the classification "static liquid"
the music broken, fading in and out
weaving into my consciousness until
the chorus rings louder and truer than the solidity of brick walls
and I am no longer here
I am there
with the applause and the raised voices
my body left behind.

Observation #17, 11/27: So it is in the Marathon

(Theme: Almost)

Your muscles strain against frigid November, winter come early, this is the last hill, the last climb your calves are burning hot against your skin you feel the rope of your hamstrings taut in their sheath of muscles your quads quiver and shake, a threat of failure, you feel your bodyheat fly out the crown of your exposed head and there, at the apex, your greatest desire – the finish line – freedom – and the distance grows greater between you and it, here and there, but you push, you push, you push to reach it, even though you know you will only trip on the other side.

Observation #14, 11/8

Theme: I don't have class today, therefore a quick haiku:

I attended school
to better my craft and skill
oh god NaNo why

Observation #12.2, 11/2: I use my adrenaline to clean up my own mess, fix computers, and write poetry

I was woken from a dream

of pilot whales so large

they could be seen from the highway

great humps the shape of the hills

around them, clusters of barnacles

the size of cities, and on one

a huge, gleaming eye –

luminous, glass-smooth

globe amidst the turbulence of water,

the landscape roiling with the plunge and gyrate

of hulking bodies –

by an unprovoked Heraclean nosebleed

that spattered the bathroom sink

brighter than stills in horror films as I scrabbled for tissue

which I would promptly bleed through:

on its end, a cherry of clotted blood

round and bright, gleaming

like the whale’s eye looking

at me from across the orchards and farm lands

he had wrecked.

Observation #11, 11/1

(Theme: Loss)

We are always writing about loss.

I am withering, I am vanishing, I lost my voice when I was twenty, I lost my hearing when I was five, I lost my sight when I was seventeen, I lost my leg in the war, I lost my arm in the accident, I lost my dog, my parents, my brother, my lover, the family inheritance.

We have lost everything.

I lose things.

I lose things in the way that you do, sudden, without warning and I am pursued by that abruptness, that paralytic shock that somehow, something is missing. I am haunted by how smooth and silent loss creeps in. I fear it.

I fear that one day it will find my parents and they will be a hole in my heart I fear that my lover will die far, far from me too far for me to see or hear or hold her hand and I fear that it will come and render me useless, finally immobile, unable to give anything to a dying world from a perpetually dying hand

too soon, too soon

Observation #8, 10/23

(Theme: Vacancy)

Today the dust
motes
rattle between
my ears as
they drift lazily
in
nothing
in
white
noise

-

There are times when I should be doing so many things, but all I have the strength to think is
I want to sleep for a year.

-

There used to be Old Gods. We used to revere the motions of the Sun and Moon and the Shadows they cast. We used to fear the forces of nature. We used to bribe the fair folk nightly. We used to build great pyres and mounds for mighty kings. The wonder is gone out of the world.

An Exercise in Collage: Margaret and the Highwayman

So we worked in collage for our latest exercise. At first I was having a hard time figuring out how to go about it. Luckily, I remembered doing a found poetry prompt in high school Literary Arts with a good friend, and decided to start over, this time with scissors and glue. Points to anyone who can identify my sources. (Click to enlarge.)