SNOW!
/
walking home from class. and walking to it, i thought about how michelle and i, walking to high school together, used to have frozen hair by the time we reached the halls. little hardened icicles made of hair. (laugh)
yeah. walking home from class. randomly remembering how mr feldman trolled around the classroom, reciting "my last duchess" slo-o-wly. and how he made me read some dumb historical poem out loud the day after he found out i liked poetry. and how stupid that is.
i didn't have the best words then to explain, and i still don't, but. walking home from class. long black winter coats like new york and one man in particular. and i tried to word it, again. i always try to...
poetry is a secret relationship. justin always asks me where i get this silly terminology, "secret space" and whatnot. but it is. it's intimate. it isn't to be blared across the classroom for me, or anything done loudly...
been thinking about whitman lately, a lot. in the shower even. my mom just happened to buy leaves of grass the first fall it, uh, happened. the second day in whatever unit i was in, icu? i don't know, she brought it, along with a blue sweatshirt, some pens and pencils, and one of those yellow legal pad/tablets. i wrote down lots of lines and decided i liked him more, he was more real, more genuinely american than jerks like hemingway. it's the common given, the historian's response as well as the critic's, but it's true: whitman is america.
anyway...
and being in that ward, multiple times in different ones too. and poetry was always the major balm. i wanted to tear my eyes out; common thinking, you know. poetry was what helped keep me quiet, still. when instincts and blood through the body and mouth tell you to run. it kept me going. which is fucking cheesy but it's also true true true true. so i don't care much, that it's a cliche. poetry kept me going.
and kept me going...and simaultaneously made me so, so sad. who needs to talk and scream when things are so beautiful, and so wrong, and so painfully unaware like this. felt that, poetic awareness and writers turning to ash from finding it, in the leaves of the book. and i could have just been projecting my own situation. surely. but it still happened. resignation and ceiling staring and floor lying and cellar inabilityforcrying. stiff mouth, still bones, deer-wide eyes. all of that came back. the most lucid, most tangible, felt-thick sadness i've ever found.
i think i only told frank about how i stole Modern Poetry, a well-loved and pencilmarked edition, from the genesee ward. they had a book case in the video game room (ha) and amidst cookbooks and danielle steele there it was. and i smuggled it, to my room. and eventually out the electronically-monitored doorway. out.
dictionaries, words too. the second time. in a hospital gown with an iv drip thing i walked to the library with my dad, walked downstairs, next to the room for praying and worship. voices singing and priests with white collars. in the hospital hallway you could hear and see these things, and smell the janitor pinesol waxiness of the floor and feel the fuzzy aluminum feeling light bars on the ceiling. everyone passing by and even stopping had paper coffee cups in hand from the shop in the basement. i could smell it, but i couldn't have any.
i took out fiction, prose. along with poems. older poems, though, and new fiction. just common stuff. remains of the day and charming billy and what else. poems to memorize, which incidentally was the book from which mr currie gave us our assignment the year before--i loved mine, yeats. bethelehem and beasts and distant stars. and we had the same recital assignment for senior lit, but i wasn't around to recite mine. funny things.
and it wasn't great stuff really but old standbys and common stretchthinking lit and poems.
but i liked having it, the shining in my hands.
and then moving on, i stole a second paperback tiny anthology, for good measure. this one was even better, and it was contemporary. anne sexton's ferry poem; that's where my endless copying comes from. the start. and the girl buried, i hold my daddy like a ...(n old stone?) tree. "her kind" and the rest. and some of the stuff that's in the notebook at blackboard, later on. vonnegut snippets and poets i'd never heard of saying blank, fierce-white, sexual-with-the-air type things. and appropriating sunday rhyming. and sabbath, all over again.
and erikson. (laugh) my doctor always teased me. actually the whole staff did.
and jung, from before. (that had been one of the school library and courtyard and indie show headphone reads.) something i'd started and needed to work through...
/
the things is, you are told where to sit. how to speak--louder, softer, clearer, friendlier. fuck it. and what you should eat and should not eat (this had nothing to do with health issues, by the way. my dad brought popcorn once because it's this thing for us...but anyway. and that asshole who was a total dick from the start, who kept saying really loudly "WHEN YOU SHOT YOURSELF" and "the little kids are gonna freak out, so try to be discreet and we will try to handle it" fuck you, who knew my mom because she taught his sons and whom she didn't like, asked me after my family left why on earth my dad would do that. "we have popcorn here, you know." fuck you fuck you.
...)
he's also the guy who administered my "are you a schizophrenic or a moron" test. ugh. this one goes beyond the usual "i am happy all the time" or "sometimes i think people are out to get me" or even mmpi shit. it was cognitive stuff, "can you draw a straight line." (laugh)
anyway. so you are here, and how you are to look, appear to feel, and interact, and speak, and even go about daily functions, are all being directed, molded, criticized, whatever. poetry is in a book. and it's the whole thing. and when i close that book, when i'm in my stupid exposed room, i don't have to tell anyone what just happened. it's between me and the vision of me that sat on the island at night in my head. there was the only partition, in my head. between me and everyone. yeah.
and it's childish, sure. but i needed that. when they demand everything from you, intimates and everything, there has to be one part you keep alone.
one blonde nurse suggested i stop reading books and date people and party with people instead. because, you know, that's interaction, valid and true.
/
so poetry and moments, vivid ghastly lucid red moments, were what i had. they became bare bones importance. maybe things were spartan in some ways but because of writing and reading and moments remembered with people, things internally were painfully rich, intense. i had a lot that way. words and memory.
when i didn't have people who understood, or pudding cups without potentially harmfully edges removed, or plastic knives, or light bulbs. when my insides and outsides were getting poked and dissected and exposed to harsh lighting. retreat's the resounding response. i don't blame myself.
so i took it, because they fucking owe me. no, that's not true. but he knew where i was coming from, to a point. i think we both still had or have that anger. under: snowy coats, cold skin.
/
walking home from class. and walking to it, i thought about how michelle and i, walking to high school together, used to have frozen hair by the time we reached the halls. little hardened icicles made of hair. (laugh)
yeah. walking home from class. randomly remembering how mr feldman trolled around the classroom, reciting "my last duchess" slo-o-wly. and how he made me read some dumb historical poem out loud the day after he found out i liked poetry. and how stupid that is.
i didn't have the best words then to explain, and i still don't, but. walking home from class. long black winter coats like new york and one man in particular. and i tried to word it, again. i always try to...
poetry is a secret relationship. justin always asks me where i get this silly terminology, "secret space" and whatnot. but it is. it's intimate. it isn't to be blared across the classroom for me, or anything done loudly...
been thinking about whitman lately, a lot. in the shower even. my mom just happened to buy leaves of grass the first fall it, uh, happened. the second day in whatever unit i was in, icu? i don't know, she brought it, along with a blue sweatshirt, some pens and pencils, and one of those yellow legal pad/tablets. i wrote down lots of lines and decided i liked him more, he was more real, more genuinely american than jerks like hemingway. it's the common given, the historian's response as well as the critic's, but it's true: whitman is america.
anyway...
and being in that ward, multiple times in different ones too. and poetry was always the major balm. i wanted to tear my eyes out; common thinking, you know. poetry was what helped keep me quiet, still. when instincts and blood through the body and mouth tell you to run. it kept me going. which is fucking cheesy but it's also true true true true. so i don't care much, that it's a cliche. poetry kept me going.
and kept me going...and simaultaneously made me so, so sad. who needs to talk and scream when things are so beautiful, and so wrong, and so painfully unaware like this. felt that, poetic awareness and writers turning to ash from finding it, in the leaves of the book. and i could have just been projecting my own situation. surely. but it still happened. resignation and ceiling staring and floor lying and cellar inabilityforcrying. stiff mouth, still bones, deer-wide eyes. all of that came back. the most lucid, most tangible, felt-thick sadness i've ever found.
i think i only told frank about how i stole Modern Poetry, a well-loved and pencilmarked edition, from the genesee ward. they had a book case in the video game room (ha) and amidst cookbooks and danielle steele there it was. and i smuggled it, to my room. and eventually out the electronically-monitored doorway. out.
dictionaries, words too. the second time. in a hospital gown with an iv drip thing i walked to the library with my dad, walked downstairs, next to the room for praying and worship. voices singing and priests with white collars. in the hospital hallway you could hear and see these things, and smell the janitor pinesol waxiness of the floor and feel the fuzzy aluminum feeling light bars on the ceiling. everyone passing by and even stopping had paper coffee cups in hand from the shop in the basement. i could smell it, but i couldn't have any.
i took out fiction, prose. along with poems. older poems, though, and new fiction. just common stuff. remains of the day and charming billy and what else. poems to memorize, which incidentally was the book from which mr currie gave us our assignment the year before--i loved mine, yeats. bethelehem and beasts and distant stars. and we had the same recital assignment for senior lit, but i wasn't around to recite mine. funny things.
and it wasn't great stuff really but old standbys and common stretchthinking lit and poems.
but i liked having it, the shining in my hands.
and then moving on, i stole a second paperback tiny anthology, for good measure. this one was even better, and it was contemporary. anne sexton's ferry poem; that's where my endless copying comes from. the start. and the girl buried, i hold my daddy like a ...(n old stone?) tree. "her kind" and the rest. and some of the stuff that's in the notebook at blackboard, later on. vonnegut snippets and poets i'd never heard of saying blank, fierce-white, sexual-with-the-air type things. and appropriating sunday rhyming. and sabbath, all over again.
and erikson. (laugh) my doctor always teased me. actually the whole staff did.
and jung, from before. (that had been one of the school library and courtyard and indie show headphone reads.) something i'd started and needed to work through...
/
the things is, you are told where to sit. how to speak--louder, softer, clearer, friendlier. fuck it. and what you should eat and should not eat (this had nothing to do with health issues, by the way. my dad brought popcorn once because it's this thing for us...but anyway. and that asshole who was a total dick from the start, who kept saying really loudly "WHEN YOU SHOT YOURSELF" and "the little kids are gonna freak out, so try to be discreet and we will try to handle it" fuck you, who knew my mom because she taught his sons and whom she didn't like, asked me after my family left why on earth my dad would do that. "we have popcorn here, you know." fuck you fuck you.
...)
he's also the guy who administered my "are you a schizophrenic or a moron" test. ugh. this one goes beyond the usual "i am happy all the time" or "sometimes i think people are out to get me" or even mmpi shit. it was cognitive stuff, "can you draw a straight line." (laugh)
anyway. so you are here, and how you are to look, appear to feel, and interact, and speak, and even go about daily functions, are all being directed, molded, criticized, whatever. poetry is in a book. and it's the whole thing. and when i close that book, when i'm in my stupid exposed room, i don't have to tell anyone what just happened. it's between me and the vision of me that sat on the island at night in my head. there was the only partition, in my head. between me and everyone. yeah.
and it's childish, sure. but i needed that. when they demand everything from you, intimates and everything, there has to be one part you keep alone.
one blonde nurse suggested i stop reading books and date people and party with people instead. because, you know, that's interaction, valid and true.
/
so poetry and moments, vivid ghastly lucid red moments, were what i had. they became bare bones importance. maybe things were spartan in some ways but because of writing and reading and moments remembered with people, things internally were painfully rich, intense. i had a lot that way. words and memory.
when i didn't have people who understood, or pudding cups without potentially harmfully edges removed, or plastic knives, or light bulbs. when my insides and outsides were getting poked and dissected and exposed to harsh lighting. retreat's the resounding response. i don't blame myself.
so i took it, because they fucking owe me. no, that's not true. but he knew where i was coming from, to a point. i think we both still had or have that anger. under: snowy coats, cold skin.