Broken China & Speed Limits

Its that time again for me to break out the poetry. It's not like breaking out the fine china. It's more like breaking fine china. I never like my poetry until months later after rediscovering it. Then it becomes this stranger time made, remeniscent of some life together long gone, and I am left discovering the meaning in my own words. I need to desperately brush up on the rules of poetry. Don't get me wrong, I have every intention of breaking them. I figure I've forgotten enough that I may need to review, just so I know exactly what rule I am breaking at any given time. It's like speeding, I personally like to know exactly how much I am going over the speed limit when I am doing it.

Anyway, here are two poems from the past. The first is a stanza about a person I met this summer who drank way too much whiskey. The stanza says enough I suppose. The second one is something I wrote when Saddam Hussein was killed. It was actually written in a different format, but I have no clue how to make anything indent in this blog world. Blogville gets the original version. So there you go.


Saturated Spaghetti Western Take1
A fifth of whiskey riding shotgun in her hand,
She rides into view.
Like an outlaw giving up the good
Just to feel the good in being so bad,
She traded in appropriate other gyrls wear like dresses,
Never doubt’n this Jack knows what to do.


Noose. (written 01.01.07)
Noose. She said it was huge. Did the job instantly. Snap. He was dead. Emails poured through, 3000 dead. It was time to hold a vigil. Form a circle and meditate on another soldier dead, another brother, sister, son, mother, father, daughter affected. The key word here? Dead. That’s war. War is not a pleasant peace pipe, puffed and passed. War. As we finish our holidays, start a new year, go back to our jobs. We are at war, hidden behind insurgence and reconstruction. While we play our civil duty obedient and submissive, lapping up our long holiday weekends, peace written in the glowing star of David on the street corner WAR happens. This nation, we citizens are at war. It didn’t stop the day they tied the noose around his neck. Snap. Instantly. He was just another number of war. It didn’t stop Darfor. Didn’t stop global warming. Didn’t disabuse the pain. Snap. Instantly. And the war goes on.

free thought randomness

untitled

It’s funny how

time

can refresh the skin.

It’s funny how

time

can bring insight into our stories.

It’s funny how

time

can take the back seat

forcing some moments to last forever.

They don’t, they never do.

But sometimes they can feel like forever,

stretching on and on and on,

and I begin to wonder if anything will ever change.

Sure things always change.

I grow into this beautiful woman and self,

collecting myself in this life

like a really fuck!ng good story,

but residuals of unkempt stories linger

like broken strands of fabric frayed

by their unending-ness.

I wear these unfinished stories like

oily skin, self-doubt pimpled on the cheeks.

Then,

one moment,

random

and not planned

turns the tables,

and

I can see

what those strands are good for.

It’s funny

how random conversations

with random friends

can take

time

out of the back seat

we begin to drive somewhere else.

I did not plan this change,

did not even expect it could happen,

but here I am

exfoliated

by it.

for mandy

Walking with stationary thoughts,
tucked away on the loading dock,
while watching this city move.
I am reminded of you,
thoughts unfold from the envelopes
of living,
the stickiness of the seal
long since worn open.
I remember you –
age 3 running around
in the rays of the sun,
bare naked
and liberated
from any thought of indecency.
I remember you
at 6-years-old,
eyes closed
while pumping the legs
back and forth
forth and back
on the swings,
watching the colors
change
from yellow to red,
red to yellow,
the head tilts further and further back.
You hung like a board
arms tethering you to flight,
until you bonked your head
on the ground,
scraping skin
and bleeding your favorite color.
Tears were a momentary response
turned into another story
about how once,
while watching the black screen
of closed eyes light up into the Technicolor
from the sun, you scraped your head.
~A Letter From You~

Slowly, I am reconnecting to my words.

oh, and its snowing AND its sticking!

dancing the waltz with time: it's snowing!

Time took back her ever present ticking

and
slowed down.
Time gave me her hands
and
we dance a slow paced waltz,
neither leading nor falling behind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’m currently at the library, helping a fellow student/friend with an SPSS program for that pesky research class. I found I had time to write, so thought I would put a few thoughts to the page, but realize I still don’t have much to say. I have a few pieces twirling in my head, but they’re not ready for this page. Time has been good to me this week and I’ve been reorganizing my home, so when winter break comes, I can focus on other things. It’s finally snowing that snow that’s gonna stay, and I feel completely content.

I’m going back to helping my friend who wants to be referred to as sassy Chocolate. I hope to post a piece for Thanksgiving, but…just in case.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Sunday Scribbling: Morning

I am procrastinating today, so thought I would do this week's Sunday Scribblings early. My rule for SS is to write something head to hand for the most part. Its an ice breaker for the mind. When I think of mornings this is what came to me, and I fell in love with the morning even more. Thanks Sunday Scribblings for an always fun and stretching exercise! ~GoGo

Morning. The crack of dawn, glow ball of light creeping up the horizon. I have spent many days driving home at dawn, watching the sky turn fiery shades of orange, exhausted and ready for bed. I often wonder these days if I have had too much sunrise in my life, then looking forward in my days know I have not had enough. Memory tells me of staying up in close proximity to friends and love ones waiting for the emanating beauty of that sunrise. She offers me moments when once I woke up by dawn’s light comfortably close in bed. She tells me how dawn captures everything new in the world.

Morning. Fresh brewed coffee steeping in kitchens. That ritual of bathrobe, coffee and newspaper or magazine, missed these days, harbor a warm place in the mornings of my life. Cutting out the rushed routine of living, it’s the right cup of Joe – earthy, warm, and full bodied dark – that slows down time and me with it. That cup of really bad java at the diner with a mixture of friends who know how to laugh, or on the road when this self becomes a traveler stopping on the side of the road for the first cup of brew before heading into the between that lives on roads traveled. Morning and coffee are good to me.

Morning. The stretch of the body getting taller, arms spread out, back arched, butt tightly squeezed as the body yawns. There is nothing like the morning stretch. Nothing like waking in the day’s dawn and welcoming the conscious back into the body.

Morning. Years spent kind of sleeping through it, preferring the harbor of late night living and early afternoon rising, I have come to appreciate the morning for the graceful beauty it is. Entering the full fledge workforce, morning was this blasphemes thing that welcomed in horrid routine and low-ceiling living of a paycheck. I have since given up that world, so I could love the morning for what she is. She is a good thing.

Everyone is welcomed to participate in Sunday Scribblings. Please go here to check other author's post this week.

sunday scribblings: skin

~I told myself I was going to start writing for Sunday Scribbles again. I promised myself, no matter the prompt I would write what came to mind and post what that was. Well, what came to mind was rough. I was surprised I went directly to thoughts of touching skin when I read this prompt. It may be very inappropriate, perhaps down right rated R, but this is one of the things I love about skin - being touched and touching. I offer with respect and hope no one is too insulted by my response. Read at your own risk.

~skin~
Thinking of skin,
my mind went to touch,
touching skin,
that apothecary shop of sensuality.

What is your favorite part of the skin?
The nape of the neck,
scented sweet
or the concaved dent between
clavicle and sternum?
The forehead?
Perhaps we move downward towards the shoulders,
rounded and soft, the arms firm or downy?
The palms, the tops of hands – fingertips?
Perhaps the subtle seduction of the breast,
queen areola in her fleshy goodness?
The navel – a hidden world born the moment
we are cut into an individual at birth?
Perhaps toes, or the sandy softness of the treaded foot?
The ankle? The calf, or perhaps the thigh, going higher and higher?
The skin covering the sharpened hip bones waiting for a kiss?
Or is it somewhere else among meadows and southern lips?

- Want to know what other people said about skin? Go to Sunday Scribbles.

pieces

I've randomly try and write poetry. Words on a page motivated out of words that just sound fun. I usually get a far as one stanza before I am done. Here is a collection of random pieces. I'm now going to go for a run...my brain hurts from studying too much. Peace ~GG

Unfurling
Spending time collecting self
Like an apron folded tight
Against the edge of a sunrise,
creeping through the windowsill.
All wound up, a clean clothe
Worn to scrap just sitting there,
Breaking threads unused
In their kept ness.
Its time to expand.
Its time to let go,
And go unfurling.

Echo Pitched Back
Standing at thresholds, the flesh pickled,
Eyes squinting to see the other side.
Sometimes even seers can’t see beyond
The echo pitched back.
What’s beyond this? What’s beyond this?

Untitled
Rusted thoughts creaking in the head
under bellied routine,
they squeak sharply
stranded in time,
to press beyond the conditional
condition she has gotten herself into.

moral incontinence. Incontinent in morals. The inability to keep oneself from morally getting wet. The inability to be a good gyrl, a good soul…straight maybe. The lack of moral character. The act of transgressing randomly without notice (my favorite). The act of uncontrollably failing to live up to ones own morals.

Post Number 240

Post Number 240

I don’t know why I am on this page, having nothing to say.
Acting the adult throughout this day,
Then cut out during the early evening
and let myself play.

Projects already coming due,
That presentation. The paper.
Internship tomorrow,
Then work the next day.

I’m gearing up for busy.
Gearing up, but still not ready
To commit to staying this way.
~ ~

Someone asked me this evening,

“You working on your own story?”

The response,

unspoken, but spoken in my head said,

“Who the fck knows.”

Whatever I’m doing here,

is just something I got to do.

It doesn’t fit this career forming,

the Social Worker,

therapist,

doesn’t fit with this

clandestine writer

scribbling bobbles about her day.

Don’t get me wrong,

I am committed to getting that piece of paper –

that Master’s hanging over my desk.

Yet, I know there is no absolution

for the other half of me

who likes scribbling away –

for all she has to say.

I’m a simple girl.

I can only hold a few

solid

projects happening at once.

School, internship and work

are about all I can handle on this plate,

yet

if I could just refocus this energy

I put on this page,

I’d start writing that story

that’s always brewing in my head.

Hmm.

Then I smile

as I look at my sidekick pile of things

that I need to do tomorrow

and how time just pushed me into later –

resigned to what’s been written

is about all I have in me today.

Until then, I guess this is my story I’m working on.

Trying To Make Sense of Me

I keep thinking I am going to put down this page. It was fun at first, but now I struggle with what I want from it. I go internal writing words for myself to myself, knowing this is a safer place to be. Then, as I begin to end my notes ready to turn to the next page, I realize there is more to this public page waiting for me. I was working on the next Sunday Scribble today, trying to find words that fit. I decided to search through old writings to see if something could inspire me…then I came across the poems below. They were fleeting thoughts between life happening, I already forgotten I had written them.

When I read the poems I realized, I still have more on this page for the world. I don’t know if my words will ever spur more then a few observers to this page, or if I will write that book that’s been brewing in my head forever. I do know writing is a part of me. I can’t let it go, so much so, that it grows bigger everyday. Bigger then a personal journal…bigger than me. I twist words in my head to figure out how I can change them into something new as a daily habit. When I share a moment with friends, always words are forming in my head to describe the movement of it – as though just being is an overture for the world to hear. All the while, an undercurrent forms of a different story completely from me, built from the world around me…I want to share it more than anything. Is this impulse, this desire what it means to be a writer?

Creating (written 4/2/06)
Creating.
Born from it,
every cell in me
yearns
to grow words
into phrases
into lines
into stages
that change
the beginning
to something else in the end.

Creating.
Raised with it,
a comfort
when no words
were given,
no sounds driven,
like the ones
I created softly in my head.

Creating.
Forged in it,
like a phoenix
from the flame,
wings mighty,
eyes alert,
when all things
change,
this is the one
truth
that can be said.

Intimacy (Written 4/23/06) Dedicated to Beansprout
Finding self is an epic story
It’ll take a lifetime to read.
We all are bound for our own glory
It’s just about finding out what we need.

I found a dance between the evening and morning
Stepping between the cracks that I made.
I found laughter at Dinner tables
While sipping bad coffee.
I found truth in my own handwriting
I found voice while learning it’s all about timing -
Under impressions that doubt wasn’t gonna fade.

Finding self is an epic story,
It’ll take a lifetime to read.
We all are bound for our own glory
It’s just about finding out what we need.

In all this searching, settling down into me,
Knowing one thing, finding is searching
For a compass to direct me.
‘Cause I found out that all this genuine
Is me finally saying, I am so In to me, see.

Finding self is an epic story
It’ll take a lifetime to read.
We all are bound for our own glory
It’s just about finding out what we need.

Unfolding (written 5/11/06)
Driving down this road,
my little girl riding shot gun,
and my future in the back seat.
I catch her,
grey haired and wrinkled eyes,
in glimpses in my rearview mirror.
I know she is
watching
out from behind.
Letting go of knowing the answers,
I drive down unexplored highways
just using the skills
I have in navigating my time.
The future is ahead,
the past behind,
and I am in the middle driving down Route 9.
My little girl has come to trust me
and the path I choose to take,
‘cause she knows there's something brewing,
something I’m gonna make.

Sunday Scribble: Part Duex

The second installment for Sunday Scribble here. This was inspired by the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip book I read today, the Proud Family Cartoon I watched, complete with the ratter tat tat of spoken word poetry, the word alabaster that reminds me of the navel of the belly, and the Beancounter. Lady, I jumped out and wound up here today. I'm loving this! Thanks.
~GoGo

P.S. I would love to read this on a stage someday.

Real Life

~~~
Now get ready to breathe in
simultaneously through nose and mouth
Head titled back, back arched
Let the air fill the lungs,
Deepening the fullness weighting
down your hips
grounding you to the ground.

And as the breath completely
Incapacitates,
and you are swimming
in the Fullness of your filled lungs,
Blow out everything inside you.

REAL LIFE
(all caps, please note)
Is the embodiment of all we experience.
It is the sundry steps of our journey
and the alabaster stones that sharpens our
hands to hold our egos.

REAL LIFE,
Is the blended colors
between happiness
And not,
the spot
on the spectrum
marking where we are at
At any given time.

REAL LIFE
Is Every moment we choose to do what
At any given moment,
Like the earth rotating around itself
Rotating around the sun,
Spinning around the galaxy
Swirling with the best of the dust
In our own universes!
Life is as real as the context
In which we breathe it in.

REAL LIFE
Are the stones of comfort
That hold us up in our daily
Lives, the bread of nurture
That we are lucky to find.
The pitter patter of awakened
love, from self and others.
AND the self love permeating
Out for others to hold ‘cause self
Love is nothing if it’s only something
watched.

REAL LIFE
Is the hard times that blisters our souls
And the good times that heal them.
It is the tear that is shed as well as the
Laughter we share,
And we are lucky if we are aware enough to
Appreciate both as life unfolding.

REAL LIFE
Is the friendships we hold,
all those relationships
We mold by accidental bumps
On all our roads.

REAL LIFE
Encompasses the beauty of all that
Entails us,
That ties us to living like Gideon’s knot.
Whether we choose to own it
or not,
It is every thing between our first breath
And last.

REAL LIFE ~ is the life we live.

Sunday Scribble: What would you attempt if you knew you would not fail?

Here is my first attempt for Sunday Scribble. I debated whether to write a prologue to this work and decided for the first attempt I would. The reason for this is mostly because I did not expect what I wrote when I started. When faced with the question, I seemed to be searching for a way to change the past, rather then what I would do in the future, partly because I am excited about going forward with the risk of failure still involved. I learned this from life lessons that have ushered me forward. I don't usually write poetry, since I can't keep to a rule to save my life. But when asked the question, the first three lines immediately came to me and I went from there. Pretty much this is me writing head to hand, and this is what unfolded. Very much fun and cathartic. With that said, excuse the roughness.

~GoGo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What would I do, if I knew I could not fail?

I would teach backwards,

all the lessons learned forward,

if I knew my attempt would not fail.

I'd comfort myself on the eve of trepidation

with truth that all will be okay.

I'd not hesitate to take back worry

and comfort gingered isolation,

if I already knew they would not stay.

But then why stop there?

~

I'd stop myself from trudging forward

when the battles were already lost.

I'd not go down corridors of the past,

full of mistakes and high stake costs -

if I knew my attempts would not fail.

I'd not tell her I liked her,

usurping the exchange of my ego,

knowing now that it's easier to keep silent lessons

then do away with the sideways stares.

But then why stop there?

~

I'd pass along the things that we-know-now

to everyone who did not know then,

teaching our foremothers the lessons they learned

only after taking steps they had to defend -

if I knew my attempts would not fail.

I'd stop all mother's from the deathly grasps of childbirth,

stop marriages that harbored pain and fear.

But then why stop there?

~

I'd stop slave ships and puritans and fur traders

and fear. I'd stop murders and wars and forced migration anywhere.

And I'd take away all the chance in the games we play -

if I knew my attempts would not fail.

I'd stop our foremother's mothers finding their way foreward

from original homeland of our birth, if I knew that it would

stop the lost hopes and failures harbored in our hearths.

But then why stop there?

~

I'd take away all choices that had risk,

all words that hurt, all freedoms that

chain us to our heartbreak and loss,

if I knew my attempt could not fail.

I'd wipe away all we did not know and replace

it with what we think-we-know,

But then, we'd stop there.

~

Cruched salt, Flowing Water, and Silence

Spending time pushing thoughts from my head, trying to let go of things I cannot change.
This is me trying to avoid a bad accident, one I cannot walk away from.

Took another walk, but my mind was too restless with it all, so I walked faster.
Step after step, I listened to the heavy thud of boot on cement, the water mixed with undisolved salt crunched underneath.
I asked myself, am I the salt, boot, or the self walking?

I am restless and I am not letting go of things I should.

Came up to the river, flowing slow and thick.
Asked the current what does letting go look like?
My heart beating too fast, it thumped with impatience.
Silence from the water.

I asked myself am I the river, the shore, or the self standing?
Threw a stone in the river...
I asked the current again, what does letting go look like?
Silence.

Random Findings While Reorganizing

Monday, May 30, 2005 - 5:39am
Sitting here watching time go by
while writing these lines.
Watching people sleep
while cleaning their messes.
Tired of waiting for me
to get through this mood.

Today's to do tasks
awaits me when this shift is done.
Clean the house, clean the laundry,
clean my mind of the past.
Miss Ray and Chad all in the same day.
This mood has become my metronome
to my daily task - one beat, two beat, three -
missing something - the counterpoint to time.

A neighbor of mine had an epiphany again,
that everything happens for a reason.
She shares her mantra thinking every time
is the first time. I appreciate this
redudancy in insight and love how this
un-novel novelty reinvents itself in her.

I adjust my clock by her words, trusting
everything happens for a reason.
Everyone in my life is here for
a reason, even if they are limited to a season.

I trust that death and leaving offer
impermanence and impermanence
is what will make the next two years
doable. That doesn't stop the constant
beat in my head going on and on, when
will this sadness end. When will I stop
watching time pass and away from this mood?

The Neighborhood
Casual evening at home,
sitting on the porch,
watching the night go by.
My neighbrohood is city and lights.
The stop sign, covers the Rene's
in the hairshop sign,
and from the stop
grows the branches of a tree
that hangs under the street lamp -
street light falling on the road,
like a flood of orange
fading into shadows
covering me on the porch
in a casual night at home.
5/22/05

Ghost in the Chord
A ghost in a chord
Everything there long since mourned
I’d show you the key to unlocking
Your door…but not wanting to give
Just a little bit more.
I close my eyes to nothing there,
And realized there is nothing there.
Just the manifestation of a ghost in a chord
Nothing to see, nothing to hold, just
Me giving to you, me giving to you, then giving of me
to a ghost in a chord.
Take my silence as an epitaph, a final eulogy
To this ghost in a chord.
9/10/05