The Politician Poem

A disgusting hot day
in Washington
(should be cooler in October)
and I've never felt more like
me
than right here.
I shut the curtains
and let my amber eyes,
marrow,
turn to liquid mint jelly on the mute
stifling
oak desk in front of me.
I chew on my red ball point pen,
Try to write policy.
It's the aloneness;
Unbearable-
Squeezing me past the point
Where my blood runs warm.
I need millions around me.
I know nothing more than
you or you or you
running amuck, chopped celery
celebrated as the garnish of the living.
I've found my way
With words, is all. Somehow out
Of the empty scratches
in my throat
Sentences formed and flowered like
root.
I clutch the Rice Crispy Squares
and orange lilies like little spades
that dig up grief.
My ball point pen drops.
I don't reach down on the floor
to get it.
My husband is dead, but
it's the you and you and you
Who I love.
I bite into a stale Rice Crispy Square
and inhale the smell of lilies.
No one ever comes in here.
Without knocking first.

The zoo

I always feel the same way when I go to the zoo. I get a sinking sense of humanity, especially when the chimpanzees stare at me from behind their glass habitat, which is a pretty small world for living beings to exist in. On the other hand, a lot of zoos are doing good work to rehabilitate these animals. I like that part. I just always kind of feel like a jerk. And baby elephants are always cute.
The Baltimore Zoo is interesting/okay. They make you walk a long, long pathway before you can actually see any animals. I wasn't sure that they actually had many, but it turns out to my relief that they did. You just have to hike a bit to get there. Since its Halloween there were tons and tons of kids in costume. Someday maybe I'll be one of those people pushing a stroller and pointing out the habits of the penguins to my own child. Joy. (?)

yaay videos?

I'm going to have to do a bit of last minute filming before class today. I'm not sure how this video is going to turn out but I've never made a video before in my life. That was my excuse for the website project as well, and that didn't turn out badly at all. i don't want to spend money to get more music and I don't know where to get free stuff, so I guess I'll have to use some music from iTunes that I already have, or some CD's lying around my boyfriend's apt. He does have some really crazy music. My video will probably be fifteen minutes long, I hope that's long enough to play around with it on iMovie.

Yay videos

For my video I decided that I'm going to film myself reading from poetry books and some of my own poetry, with some funky ironic techno music in the back. Hopefully it will get goofy. I need someone to film it (I think I know just the person.) I did a clip myself reading "Letters to a Young Poet" by Rilke and it was kind of boring, no animated voice or gestures. I'm just not comfortable filming random people who might not want to be in someone else's video. I'm not sure where I'm going to get music from. Maybe there are some free download websites where I can get hypnotic dance music and download part of the mp3. I might do some dance performance in the video, just for fun. : ) I might have three or four different clips of me reading, hopefully in different places wearing different outfits. I want one to be outside sitting on the steps of the porch. Yay videos!

Random writing

I'm not angry anymore;
not about any of it.
Blood clots on my cheeks
Purplish rage plum-colored
Driven forth
by the longing for silken sheets
and blonde braided hair.
I've calmed down in my old age.
If there were one thing
I wished for it would be
to find that peace
I never had
to find what I have lacked
and what has colored my whole
life; that missing element.
Letting my guard down,
becoming unfrozen in the face of others,
I need them all.

List 5

Eleven things I'd wish for if they'd come true:

No guilt.
To have an animal spirit.
Be able to eat more carbs without gaining weight.
My nails to not grow so they stay short. I have to cut them every four or five days.
Not to have to get gas for my car.
Not to have to pee every time I wake up.
To know just one thing from my future so I have a clue of what will happen.
World harmony.
To know my background so that I could tell what diseases I'm susceptible to.
No cruelty towards anyone.
Be able to speak Korean.

Old writing

Sometimes I like to read old things that I've written, it gives me a funny little feeling in my gut. Here's what I used to be. And its weird to look at things and see how I've changed.
Oh, I miss creativity class!

Write or Die Free Write November 3rd

"A man and a woman

are one

A man and a woman and a blackbird

are one."

-Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

I truly believe that this is true I and a man and an animal such as a blackbird are one. We are all animals wild and free in our souls we all belong out in the wilderness thought some of us are freer than others the blackbird picks at the garbage the liver of the mouse all kinds of carrion shiny onyx feathers cruel killing beak stark black eyes I pick at my dinner refusing to eat much lest I get too fat and become unattractive I pick at things slowly tearing them apart my life is bursting busting at the stitches like an overstuffed embroidered pillow on my future couch when I sit and watch pointless painful spasmic television for hours at a time and things have seized to matter yes I have a warped view of old age I am very young so very young and my blood is hot like that of a blackbird I want to only love and be happy in this life and not obsess over you but bring joy and receive joy I don't know if a blackbird has joy but the dream of human man and woman are one is to fly and the blackbird can do this are we envious we can do almost everything except fly are a man and a woman and a bird that flies really one yes in a sense I connect to animals I feel like I am an animal a bird or a frog or a grasshopper or maybe the autumn leaf that falls numbly from the tree and I can see that if it falls it does not matter if I fall it does not matter would anyone care it would not matter in the whole light or fire of time things would go on the blackbird also decays its body rots and things go on so what makes a man and a woman any different only our knowledge of it and that it causes us grief there is no other difference will we really go to paradise in the sky what if we made our lives like birds and were natural would our lives be any better would our pain just come from hunger and not a lack of money or stability in the job market or how many weights we can lift or our credit score or whether we shop a lot it makes me sick and want to vomit I want my pain to come from hunger and bleeding I see the naturalness underneath the artifice of the social things and in this way a man and a woman and a black bird are one.