Ema

Ema

Everything is made of small triangles and square shapes here,

Paisley patterns float over wood floors

I am in the upper room, waiting for a ritual 

that never happens. I search for emotion-redemption -
am left searching.

I sleep in the room that belonged to a child that is now

no-longer-with-us, and the tensions between my universe and that one

ripple softly over me, tucking me in, forgetful of the divide.

We are all children of god, whoever that is, and I smoke cigars with her father.

Don't worry, stop worrying, my feet are never cold

I gather eggs for the morning.

I never met you, not-among-us, 

but your shadow falls over,

immense.

cornfields absorb hymns,

the congregation is shoeless again.

There are different deaths, not-among-us.

After you left candles were lit for the quiet.

trails and canyons

slow creeping sickness

letting myself be lesser,

how ordinary.

music is hard

she pulls at one string 

the noise shows uncertainty

mahogany echoes.

old notebooks

flipping through old notebooks and finding drawings from ages ago..

I love finding old drawings -- when i see them, i can always remember clearly where i was, what i was doing, at the moment i was making them.  time moves in such funny rivers otherwise, that its nice to have these footholds.

Just also wanted to share an agnes martin quote i read today:

"There’s nobody living who couldn’t stand all afternoon in front of a waterfall .... Anyone who can sit on a stone in a field awhile can see my painting. Nature is like parting a curtain, you go into  it .... as you would cross an empty beach to look at the ocean.It’s not about facts, it’s about feelings. It’s about remembering feelings and happiness.  A definition of art is that it makes concrete our most subtle emotions. I think the highest form of art is music. It’s the most abstract of all art expression." 

poster i made

i like how this one turned out.

evening haiku

i preserve water

these cupped hands prevent escape

there's always a leak.

first window

First window

Unknowing and smoky with doubt

Finding strands of black hair

Plucking and pulling you out

How do I feel less alone?

How do I feel less

Remember snapping a polaroid

So we’d never forget our first window?

Now its all noise, humming

Drumming along as I sew new patterns

Pulling stray black hairs from the path of the needle.

Take pictures of rivers on my phone,

moment by moment im losing moments.

I lay here in wait,

“…yes, since I am waiting”

Ready to pounce on every mistake

That I make, but I like to make them.

There were cypress trees past the second story,

Mossy shadows helped me sleep,

Here it’s desert air, hot then cold, I toss and turn

And watch the street lights flicker off in the morning.

We climbed higher on the ferris wheel, overlooking ocean

You discovered your vertigo, and then we go

I tipped us over the edge of the known world.

Upside down I see my loneliness, inverted

Standing up in soaking linens

Embarrassed of itself, and groaning,

“…yes, since I am waiting”

over and over until I’m so sick of myself

that I stop the ride and get off, uncertain

of whether I’ve righted

or I’m still hanging under your version.

Everything is ocean roar in my ears,

And I can’t hear for listening.

I weave together braids of black hair

Messy ropes, and it is still perilous cold.

No more blankets of southern air envelop me,

So I seek contentment, wet with whiskey,

As I sew, crossing back on my own tracks

Looking to look out the first window again,

See if I see what I saw,

Pushing through waves of black hair

But there’s only more wall.

I'm kicking up dirt,

Crunching junebugs under my soles,

The air is thick with their fucking.

I take a picture from outside,

Where it looks like every other window.

Greenhouse

Inside of the terrarium

You hold me gently back by my elbows,

pictures are snapped, tucking us in.

Memory is feeble -

Flowerheads flop lazily behind us.

Rain from interwoven, white pipes -

murmur as they create atmosphere

Stuffy and dense, you reach

Guide me through the manmade fog.

Dressed for a wedding

Overwhelming happiness and

Cobalt chrysanthemums distract me.

I split the blade of grass

And form a true-love ring.

Remember to remember

Dead things are always recalled as dawn. 

Blink once slowly, memory photograph, 

I am withdrawn.

Swapping stories over pale blue cake

I take bites to keep from talking.

Icing stains our teeth, your tongue.

Gridded glass helps me define

Latitude, longitude

Keep my thoughts pinned despite the

Whirring fans and tangled ferns.

“No that didn’t happen then”

Moments slip easily into clear plastic sleeves.

I don’t know the name of that flower

But remember Feynman said names don’t matter.

White obscures the sky, clouds settle in closely

Press up against the glass panes, leering.

its been a really long time since i've put any of my poems into the world.  feels weird, but being vulnerable is supposedly a good thing, so i've heard.  anyways, this is old, more to come?

Weekend Poem - T.S. Eliot

V.
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate – but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

The last of East Coker, I've always loved this excerpt from the poem (read all of it here).  At first it seems to be about the trouble of writing, grasping at words, but I love it in context with the rest of the series, how he loops.  And near the end, I always think about the difference age makes in how you interpret moments or memory.  Also, the line, "we must be still and still moving" gets me every time.  Anyhow, just thought I'd get this blog back up and running.  Maybe even share my own words, if I'm feeling brave soon.