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 |   My 2nd blog. My spot for sharing my life, music, and writing with my friends. |
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Hello, Hello. Fancy seeing you here. I'll work on making this nice and pretty later. *  I also have a poetry blog, for those who dig poetry:
AND I have a mental health group with a monthly challenge:
[Embed For Use By Upgraded+] Lay my hands on Heaven and the sun and the moon and the stars While the devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car ♡ * I will never make this pretty. |
| Quick entry today so I can go back to working! This poem is by the same poet who wrote "Undivided Attention," the teaching poem from a couple days ago. But instead of being serious, this one is just... funny. It's about the the impotence of proofreading, as you will see... ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "The the Impotence of Proofreading" by Taylor Mali Has this ever happened to you? You work very horde on a paper for English clash And then get a very glow raid (like a D or even a D=) and all because you are the word1s liverwurst spoiler. Proofreading your peppers is a matter of the the utmost impotence. This is a problem that affects manly, manly students. I myself was such a bed spiller once upon a term that my English teacher in my sophomoric year, Mrs. Myth, said I would never get into a good colleague. And that1s all I wanted, just to get into a good colleague. Not just anal community colleague, because I wouldn1t be happy at anal community colleague. I needed a place that would offer me intellectual simulation, I really need to be challenged, challenged dentally. I know this makes me sound like a stereo, but I really wanted to go to an ivory legal collegue. So I needed to improvement or gone would be my dream of going to Harvard, Jail, or Prison (in Prison, New Jersey). So I got myself a spell checker and figured I was on Sleazy Street. But there are several missed aches that a spell chukker can1t can1t catch catch. For instant, if you accidentally leave a word your spell exchequer won1t put it in you. And God for billing purposes only you should have serial problems with Tori Spelling your spell Chekhov might replace a word with one you had absolutely no detention of using. Because what do you want it to douch? It only does what you tell it to douche. You1re the one with your hand on the mouth going clit, clit, clit. It just goes to show you how embargo one careless clit of the mouth can be. Which reminds me of this one time during my Junior Mint. The teacher read my entire paper on A Sale of Two Titties out loud to all of my assmates. I1m not joking, I1m totally cereal. It was the most humidifying experience of my life, being laughed at pubically. So do yourself a flavor and follow these two Pisces of advice: One: There is no prostitute for careful editing. And three: When it comes to proofreading, the red penis your friend. I might just be immature, but this poem cracks me the fuck up, like every time I read it. My friend and I quote it all the time, especially with me being in school. I'll be whining and say something like, "Ughh, I fucking hate writing these papers." And he'll respond with, "Yeah, it affects manly, manly students." I don't think either of us has called it A Tale of Two Cities since we read this poem, it's always A Sale of Two Titties. I hope I don't ever have to do a speech with that title in it because I will screw it up. This is just a fun poem because you can quote it so much. I wrote a drunken poem last night and while I was looking at it this morning, J was like, "Just remember, there's no prostitute for careful editing." And I said something like, "Yeah, it's really inconvenient." It has basically become an inside joke between us. If something's too simple, one of us will say, "I need to be challenged, challenged dentally." Or, "I just wanna get into a good colleague." If something embarrassing happens, "Wow, that was humidifying..." God, for billing purposes only, I hope you all find it half as funny as I do.  |
| Today's poem is fairly unknown, so maybe a couple people will like it and become fans of Jenny Cleland. She's super interesting as a poet because she's also a painter and she kind of combines the two. As in, she uses the imagery in her poems that she would paint and she paints imagery that she uses in poems. It's sort of a cool mix up. Here's the poem: "Breaking Point" ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "Breaking Point" by Jenny Cleland I see now that you are made of glass. My father dropped a whiskey bottle once Onto a tiled slate floor And it bounced And he caught it. "That’s strong stuff," he said. You could have reached out and touched the emotion, Taken some for yourself, And we all did; Relief and delight. We all laughed hard. When you fell into soul-breaking cruelty, You bounced And I caught you. But now when I hold you, I know you’re getting thinner. You are no longer a sturdy bottle With a rim that can dent slate. You are a delicate wine glass, Glass so fine A breeze could breathe you into fragments. We are scared to touch you Without gloves or cotton wool. We don’t know how to make you strong again. We don’t know what To do. I see with growing fear, more than ever, How beautiful you are. I love this poem because it shows the perspective of a person trying to help the person with inner struggles instead of the perspective of the sufferer. I think it's rare to see that in poetry because everyone's got a story to tell and they're usually telling it. It's definitely underrated to be a supportive base for someone who is so... fragile. I try really hard to not put my inner turmoil on other people. I don't ever ask for advice on a personal struggle and I don't ever expect someone to help me through it. If I fall into the grips of depression, I typically hide it the best I can and if someone notices, I say a lot of things like: "I have it under control." Or, "it'll be okay." There's a lesson somewhere in life where you learn about depending on yourself rather than other people. Other people aren't reliable. They aren't always going to be there for one reason or another. There's going to be a time where they're going through their own shit or they just can't take the negativity because it drags them down. I think that anxiety is perfectly explained in this poem. There is such a burden that comes along with attempting to support someone in a bad situation. You break yourself trying to hold them up, trying to "fix" them. My favorite lines in this poem: You are a delicate wine glass, Glass so fine A breeze could breathe you into fragments. I think that last line is especially beautiful and that's what I love about Cleland's poems. She can talk about an idea without ever saying the word. She doesn't say the word "fragile" anywhere in the poem, but she describes it so well. And then of course, the continuation of that: We are scared to touch you Without gloves or cotton wool. We don’t know how to make you strong again. We don’t know what To do. The lines breaks just work so well there. There's such a strong sense of fear and frustration here. Because, let's be real, it is frustrating when you care about someone and you have no idea how to help them out of a bad situation. A lot of times, the answer is simple-- you can't help them. All you can do is let them know that you're there for them and that you care about them. Other than that, they're basically on their own. And that's one of the hard truths of the world. |
| In case I haven't made this clear yet, I have a lot of respect for teachers. The poet I chose today is also a teacher. He taught English, history, and math. Now he does lectures and workshops related to poetry and writing. He does workshops for students and also for teachers who teach poetry or writing. I didn't have a lot of good teachers growing up. In fact, I had a ton of terrible teachers and very few good ones. I think a lot of teachers go into the job with the right idea in their heart and then they're undervalued and underappreciated so long that they literally stop giving a fuck. I guess that's why I have a lot of respect for teachers who do actually continue to try to give a fuck. Anyway, here we go... ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "Undivided Attention" by Taylor Mali A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers, tied up with canvas straps—like classical music’s birthday gift to the criminally insane— is gently nudged without its legs out an eighth‐floor window on 62nd street. It dangles in April air from the neck of the movers’ crane, Chopin-‐shiny black lacquer squares and dirty white crisscross patterns hanging like the second‐to‐last note of a concerto played on the edge of the seat, the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over— it’s a piano being pushed out of a window and lowered down onto a flatbed truck!—and I’m trying to teach math in the building across the street. Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned? All the greatest common factors are delivered by long‐necked cranes and flatbed trucks or come through everything, even air. Like snow. See, snow falls for the first time every year, and every year my students rush to the window as if snow were more interesting than math, which, of course, it is. So please. Let me teach like a Steinway, spinning slowly in April air, so almost-‐falling, so hinderingly dangling from the neck of the movers’ crane. So on the edge of losing everything. Let me teach like the first snow, falling. Eek, I love this poem.  I always felt bad for my teachers when they were trying to get the attention of the room and everyone just kept talking or doing whatever until the teacher had to start screaming. That pretty much sucks. Professors aren't like that. College students are probably just more serious and mature, but a professor would just kick you out of the class if you were disruptive. Not like, kick you out into the hallway for the duration of the lecture, but literally kick you out of the class permanently. They don't really have that problem, I guess.Taylor Mali has a way of describing things that is just fascinating to me. The opening lines: A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers, tied up with canvas straps—like classical music’s birthday gift to the criminally insane— So great. Classical music's birthday gift to the criminally insane. I would have never thought to say something like that in my own writing.I love the example he uses of snow falling for the first time and how the kids get crazy excited and run to the window to watch it because I remember this exact thing from my youth. Everyone would always drop what they were doing in the middle of class to go watch it snow during the first snowfall of the year. Most of all, I love that Mali wraps this all back around, the piano, the snow, to say that he wants to captivate his students while teaching. That's amazingly thoughtful and that's why I love teachers. They're so passionate about whatever it is they teach. Every time I have a teacher or a professor who isn't passionate about their subject, I can only think that they're missing a huge opportunity to captivate someone in their audience. I know that I can be easily captivated by someone else's passion. I'll get into something that I don't even like if my professor is excited about it. This explains how I got so into public speaking, a class that I dreaded taking, and have been so completely disinterested in philosophy, a class I thought I would enjoy. My public speaking professor lived communication. She was the embodiment of human interaction and she was enthusiastic about every single thing she taught. My philosophy professor prints out six pages, front and back, single-spaced, for every chapter he teaches and stands at the front of the room reading the papers without ever looking up or interacting with his students. I've never seen someone look so bored for 3 hours straight every single week. I now have no interest in philosophy. As writers, we all have something that we're passionate about. When we're writing these entries for Pursue the Horizon, we're all hoping for this. We're all anticipating that moment where the poem we've shared captivates a reader completely. When we share a poem or story of our own, we're putting our heart on the line and hoping that our passion reads clearly. I think we can all relate to this poem in some way. |
| Yay, time for Sylvia Plath! Let's do it... ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "Tulips" by Sylvia Plath The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. This is like the "quintessential" Plath poem to me. It's not my favorite poem of hers, but it's one of the poems I suggest for people to read when they're trying to get into her. There are actually 4 poems I recommend when someone asks me where to start with her poetry. One is "Tulips"  (obviously). The others are "Mad Girl's Love Song" , "Lady Lazarus" , and "Mirror" . I think those four poems showcase her work well and it'll only take a person 15 minutes to read them all. If they don't dig any of them, I don't think they'd really like any of Plath's poetry.I've managed to get a lot of people into her poetry who didn't want to give her a chance. A lot of people (especially guys, in my experience), just think of Sylvia Plath as a writer for whiny teenage girls. It's sort of hard to break that stereotype and be like, nooo, just try to read some of her stuff. The first thing I read of Plath's was Ariel, a book of poetry. I found it at a secondhand store for like 99 cents and I was getting into poetry at the time, so I just picked it up and didn't read it for a while. Eventually, I read like half the poems and really liked them, so I got The Bell Jar and read that too. I was super into her from then on. I don't analyze Plath poetry, so that's not going to happen, but there are some lines I really love in this poem.  My favorite lines:I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— I like this part because, while I can't speak for her, I really get this feeling from reading her writing that she did everything she was "supposed" to do. She went to school, she got married, she had kids, she had jobs, she wrote... Basically, she did everything a person is supposed to do in order to be "happy". She wasn't an addict of any sort, not an alcoholic; she didn't live a careless or risky life. She's the perfect example of what mental illness can do to a person. I think in this verse, she's referring to the freedom of not having anything at all. I feel like she's saying that she never asked for things to be any unreasonable way. She didn't ask for anything at all. She just wants to be left alone with the freedom of her depression. It probably seems strange, but depression is a very isolating illness. A person suffering from it does not want the pressure of kids, and jobs, and family, and well... everything. They just want to be left alone because it is so freeing to not have to care. That's my takeaway anyway. |
| I'm not surprised that I couldn't make it to the halfway point without using Bukowski. Actually, I'm surprised I made it to day ten, because he's definitely one of my favorite poets. As with many of my favorite poets, it isn't a question of using the poet, it's a question of choosing between all their poems. So, I narrowed it down to two of my favorite Charles Bukowski poems, and that's the best I could do. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "Bluebird" by Charles Bukowski there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he's in there. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up? you want to screw up the works? you want to blow my book sales in Europe? there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you? This poem is definitely probably Bukowski's most famous, but on the off-chance that someone hasn't read it, I had to include it. "Bluebird" also happens to be one of my favorite Bukowski poems. Maybe there's a reason it's one of his most popular. I think this poem is about struggling with inner turmoil in general. It's about pushing those feelings down so that other people can't see them. I think it goes hand-in-hand a little bit with my entry from yesterday where I talked about swallowing anger. Some people can be more open with how they feel and they don't do this- swallow down their true emotions. Others do it regularly. I know I do. It's much easier with the anonymity of WDC to share how I feel about things. In real life, there are only 2 people who know how I feel about pretty much anything. I'm a big proponent on the whole "fake it til you make it" idea, so I just fake myself chill until it's believable. Favorite lines? there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him I think there's some commentary here about society's expectations in terms of how people are supposed to act and conduct their lives, free of emotion for the most part. And the next poem... "Consummation of Grief" by Charles Bukowski I even hear the mountains the way they laugh up and down their blue sides and down in the water the fish cry and the water is their tears. I listen to the water on nights I drink away and the sadness becomes so great I hear it in my clock it becomes knobs upon my dresser it becomes paper on the floor it becomes a shoehorn a laundry ticket it becomes cigarette smoke climbing a chapel of dark vines. . . it matters little very little love is not so bad or very little life what counts is waiting on walls I was born for this I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead. So, this is my absolute favorite Bukowski poem. I love the rawness of it. I love it from the first line to the last. There's nothing to really explain here either. It's straightforward, but it's amazing. I think that Bukowski had a pretty rough childhood and then of course, he was an alcoholic for, um, permanently. The thing about writing is that it's lonely. It just is a lonely living, a lonely hobby. If it weren't for WDC, all of us would be writing alone in our notebooks and that would just be the way it was. There wouldn't be any social interaction element to it. I'm pretty sure most of us didn't just start writing when we found this site. Most of us were writing for years and years before we were writing on any site. I think we can all attest to the loneliness of writing sometimes. It's a solo endeavor. If you add alcoholism and addiction issues to that, it just becomes a clusterfuck, but, this poem doesn't make me sad at all. I actually think it's kind of optimistic. There's a certain resignation and acceptance to it that I really respect and can relate to at the same time. God, I love Bukowski.  |
The poem I chose today is "Anger" by Charles and Mary Lamb. It's the first rhyming poem I've picked during this challenge thus far.  I usually don't take too well to rhyming poetry unless it's done the right way. I can't stand it when the rhymes seem forced and a word just sounds like it's there because it rhymes. It doesn't add anything to the poem or explain the message the best way, but it rhymes, so... it works? But, I don't see that at all in this poem. I think it works really well, and we share a name too. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "Anger" by Charles and Mary Lamb Anger in its time and place May assume a kind of grace. It must have some reason in it, And not last beyond a minute. If to further lengths it go, It does into malice grow. ‘Tis the difference that we see ‘Twixt the Serpent and the Bee. If the latter you provoke, It inflicts a hasty stroke, Puts you to some little pain, But it never stings again. Close in tufted bush or brake Lurks the poison-swelled snake, Nursing up his cherish’d wrath. In the purlieus of his path, In the cold, or in the warm, Mean him good, or mean him harm, Whensoever fate may bring you, The vile snake will always sting you. I should preface this by saying that I'm the angriest person I've ever known. You know how sometimes you get so angry that your hands just shake? That happens to me, um, every day. I have no idea why I'm so angry, which is probably the weirdest part. I had a ton of anger issues from, I'd say, age 11 or 12 on. Before someone mentions it, I've been through anger management... twice. I was always getting myself in trouble during my pre-teen and teen years because I was entirely controlled by anger. I didn't really have any other emotions, to be honest. I was just immensely angry all the time, or felt nothing at all. I got into fights at school regularly. It was just like flipping a switch in my system. Someone would say or do the wrong thing and it was all systems go, like waking up in a complete rage. After I had these fits of anger, I could almost never communicate with words why I had been so angry. I felt nothing, then complete rage, then nothing again... all within about 2 minutes. At some point, I learned to internalize my anger. Instead of taking it out on other people, I started taking it out on myself more and more often. I was even able to go to school without getting into weekly fights. When I got angry, my hands would shake and I would grind my teeth together until I could get out of the situation. Unfortunately, that's where my progress stopped. I still deal with anger this way. I don't scream at people and I don't hit them. I just completely shutdown mentally and my body develops these tics. My eye twitches, my hands shake, my teeth grind together. I have to get myself alone as quickly as possible so I can close my eyes and slowly swallow the anger back down. Once I've done that, it's gone... until it comes boiling back to the surface. The point is, I love this poem because it's so true. If your anger turns into malice, it has already gone too far. Anger that lasts more than a minute, and without reason, will always come back to the surface ad infinitum. The pitiful part is being able to recognize the serpent and still not being able to control it. That's the tragedy. In the cold, or in the warm, Mean him good, or mean him harm, Whensoever fate may bring you, The vile snake will always sting you. My favorite lines. |
| Jeffrey McDaniel is a strange poet for me because I understand some of his stuff 100 percent, and then other things, I don't understand even a little bit. Like, I'll read an entire poem of his and it'll have killer imagery, but when I'm done, I have NO idea what I just read. It's kind of like reading someone's inside joke, but the tone and imagery is so nice that I like it anyway. Today's poem is one of the super straightforward ones, but I think the idea is so interesting... ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "The Quiet World" by Jeffrey McDaniel In an effort to get people to look into each other’s eyes more, and also to appease the mutes, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words, per day. When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant I point at chicken noodle soup. I am adjusting well to the new way. Late at night, I call my long distance lover, proudly say I only used fifty-nine today. I saved the rest for you. When she doesn’t respond, I know she’s used up all her words, so I slowly whisper I love you thirty-two and a third times. After that, we just sit on the line and listen to each other breathe. I first read this poem a really long time ago, and... I didn't love it. I didn't hate it either. I just read it and was like, "okay" and then went about whatever i was doing. But for some reason, this poem stuck in my head and I caught myself thinking about it the next day, so I read it again. There are a couple things I like about this poem. First of all, I think it's really sweet, obviously. More than that though, I like the complexity of the relationship the two clearly have going on. The fact that she used all her words before they had a chance to talk and the fact that he was so proud of only using fifty-nine was just really sad in an empty way. But, obviously, it's good in the end because he's willing use the rest of his words telling her that he loves her and then they can communicate in their way by just being on the phone together. The poem is a little corny, but I think it's sort of lovely too. I also think it's cool in a futuristic dystopia kind of way. Also, because I like doing math, it was a fun one to fact check. 167 words - 59 words = 108 - 11 (end of third stanza) = 97 words / 3 (I love you) = 32 and a third times. |
| I'm gonna keep this short because I'm in a 'mood'. A "Charlie" mood- please locate the nearest emergency exit and race to it. Today's choice is Andrea Gibson, another spoken word poet. Gibson isn't one of my favorites. To be honest, I've never read a poem of Gibson's that I liked straight through, BUT every single poem of theirs does have some really, really strong lines. And yes, gender neutral pronouns. That's their thing, and not my place to disagree. Anyway, here's the poem... ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "When The Bough Breaks" by Andrea Gibson It’s two a.m. The emergency room psychiatrist looks up from his clipboard with eyes paid to care and asks me if I see people who aren’t really there. I say, “I see people how the hell am I supposed to know if they’re really there or not?” He doesn’t laugh neither do I. The math’s not on my side ten stitches and one lie. I swear I wasn’t trying to die. I just wanted to see what my pulse looked like from the inside. Fast forward one year. I’m standing in an auditorium behind a microphone reading a poem to four hundred latino high school kids who live with the breath of the INS crawling up their mother’s backbones and I am frantically hiding my scars ‘cause the last thing I want these kids to know is that I ever thought that my life was too hard. I’ve never seen a bomb drop. I’ve never felt hunger. I’ve also never seen lightning strike but we’ve all heard thunder and it doesn’t take a genius to tell something’s burning. The smoke rises between us, forming walls so high they split the sky like slit wrists and then the stars fall like blood. We’re all left with nothing, but a death wish. He said, “call me by my true name I am the child in uganda all skin and bone” Do you remember the rest? how about this one, America Jesus wept. America, Jesus wept but look at your eyes dry as the desert sand dusting the edges of your soldier’s wedding bands. Look at your soul playing dead because your ribcage is abu ghraib is san quintin is guantanamo bay and your heart had beaten them so many times they bleed the moon. Do you know children in Palestine fly kites to prove that they are still free? Can you imagine how that string must feel between their fingers as they kneel in the cinders of our missile heads You can count the dead by the colours in the sky The bough is breaking. The cradle is falling. Right now a six-year old girl is crutched in a ditch in Lebanon wishing on falling bombs. Right now our government is recording the test scores of black and Latino 4th graders to see how many prison beds will be needed in the year 2021. Right now there’s a man on the street outside that door with outstretched hands full of heart beats no one can hear. He has cheeks like torn sheet music, Every tear a broken crescendo falling on closed ears. At his side there’s a girl with eyes like an anthem that no one stands up for. Doctor, our insanity is not that we see people who aren’t there. It’s that we ignore the ones who are. Till we find ourselves scarred and ashamed walking into emergency rooms at three a.m. flooded with a pain we cannot name or explain because we are bleeding from the outside in. Skin is not impervious. Cultures built on greed and destruction do not pick and choose who they kill. Do we really believe our need for Prozac has nothing to do with Baghdad, with Kabul, with the Mexican border with the thousands of US school kids bleeding through budget cuts that will never heal to fuel war tanks? Thank god for denial. Thank god we can afford the makeup to pile upon the face of it all. Look at the pretty world. Look at all the smiling people and the sky with a missile between her teeth and a steeple through her heart and not a single star left to hold her And the voices of a thousand broken nations saying “wake me, wake me, when the American dream is over” I really love the beginning of this poem. The very end has some good lines too. I don't really disagree with the middle-end parts, they're just kind of preachy to me and that's the way Andrea Gibson is in A LOT of poems. It starts reading like an 18 year old first-time activist at times, but I guess it's good to believe in things. Anyway, I love the first three stanzas of the poem. I love the "eyes paid to care" line. But this is my favorite part: The math’s not on my side ten stitches and one lie. I swear I wasn’t trying to die. I just wanted to see what my pulse looked like from the inside. Fast forward one year. I’m standing in an auditorium behind a microphone reading a poem to four hundred latino high school kids who live with the breath of the INS crawling up their mother’s backbones and I am frantically hiding my scars ‘cause the last thing I want these kids to know is that I ever thought that my life was too hard. I think I like these lines so much because I can relate to them so well. Having depression issues? Not ideal. Having the remnants of it all over your skin for strangers to see? That part really sucks. Dealing with ER doctors, who are known for their shitty bedside manner, and with reason, is another unfortunate part of the mental illness cycle. I can totally relate to trying (frantically) to cover yourself up in various situations. Like in the poem, when you're confronted with someone who has a 'worse' life than you on a daily basis and meanwhile, you have your foot half in the grave. When people are trying desperately to survive and you're trying desperately not to... there's this sick irony about it. It's almost taunting. Anyway, I don't love this poem straight through, but it's worth it for this line alone: I just wanted to see what my pulse looked like from the inside. More amazing lines: Look at all the smiling people and the sky with a missile between her teeth and a steeple through her heart and not a single star left to hold her Seriously, amazing lines in every single one of their poems. |
Getting into this kind of late today, so I'll keep it short. Today's poet is probably not one that a lot of people know, just because he's not really known for his poetry. He was an actor in the movie Inside Man , if you saw that one, but he's mostly a spoken word poet. He's a former social worker and public school teacher, so this poem will make a lot of sense if you look at it from his perspective. Also, he's pretty good looking, even though that's not important, but is fine all the same: Carlos Andrés Gómez.  ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "What's Genocide?" By Carlos Andrés Gómez their high school principal told me I couldn’t teach poetry with profanity so I asked my students, “Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Holocaust.” in unison, their arms rose up like poisonous gas then straightened out like an SS infantry “Okay. Please put your hands down. Now raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Rwandan genocide.” blank stares mixed with curious ignorance a quivering hand out of the crowd half-way raised, like a lone survivor struggling to stand up in Kigali “Luz, are you sure about that?” “No.” “That’s what I thought.” “Carlos—what’s genocide?” they won’t let you hear the truth at school if that person says “fuck” can’t even talk about “fuck” even though a third of your senior class is pregnant. I can’t teach an 18-year-old girl in a public school how to use a condom that will save her life and that of the orphan she will be forced to give to the foster care system— “Carlos, how many 13-year-olds do you know that are HIV-positive?” “Honestly, none. But I do visit a shelter every Monday and talk with six 12-year-old girls with diagnosed AIDS.” while 4th graders three blocks away give little boys blowjobs during recess I met an 11-year-old gang member in the Bronx who carries a semi-automatic weapon to study hall so he can make it home and you want me to censor my language “Carlos, what’s genocide?” your books leave out Emmett Till and Medgar Evers call themselves “World History” and don’t mention King Leopold or diamond mines call themselves “Politics in the Modern World” and don’t mention Apartheid “Carlos, what’s genocide?” you wonder why children hide in adult bodies lie under light-color-eyed contact lenses learn to fetishize the size of their asses and simultaneously hate their lips my students thought Che Guevara was a rapper from East Harlem still think my Mumia t-shirt is of Bob Marley how can literacy not include Phillis Wheatley? schools were built in the shadows of ghosts filtered through incest and grinding teeth molded under veils of extravagant ritual “Carlos, what’s genocide?” “Roselyn, how old was she? Cuántos años tuvo tu madre cuando se murió?” “My mother had 32 years when she died. Ella era bellísima.” …what’s genocide? they’ve moved from sterilizing “Boriqua” women injecting indigenous sisters with Hepatitis B, now they just kill mothers with silent poison stain their loyalty and love into veins and suffocate them …what’s genocide? Ridwan’s father hung himself in the box because he thought his son was ashamed of him …what’s genocide? Maureen’s mother gave her skin lightening cream the day before she started the 6th grade …what’s genocide? she carves straight lines into her beautiful brown thighs so she can remember what it feels like to heal …what’s genocide? …what’s genocide? “Carlos, what’s genocide?” “Luz, this… this right here… is genocide.” And the spoken version, if you're into that: [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] So yeah, this poem clearly speaks for itself. There's no hidden meaning here. I have mad respect for public school teachers, especially inner city (and small town) ones who have to work with inadequate supplies and everyone breathing down their neck like they can somehow fix all the fucked up things these kids are going through. Not to mention the crazy restrictions that are placed on them, like he mentions in the beginning of this poem- you can't teach kids a poem that has profanity in it when something like that could really be what a kid needs to 'connect' with poetry in the first place. Maya Angelou and Robert Frost are great, but do nothing for the kids who are completely wrung dry by age 16 and need someone gritty who can understand them. They're not going to identify with these inspirational poems. You might, but the kids sharing books because their aren't enough to go around are not going to identify with "Caged Bird" even if it seems like they would or should. There's a reason that American adults know nothing about American history, let alone the history (or even locations) of other countries. We're taught blatant lies in our history books, so it makes sense that the average adult thinks that the first Thanksgiving included pilgrims and Indians holding hands around the table and feeding each other spoonfuls of cranberry sauce. It was such a sweet event, after all. And it explains why the girl sitting next to me in economics class thinks Donald Trump is already president because she saw that he won more states than the other Republicans on Super Tuesday, despite being repeatedly told that he wasn't even the Republican nominee yet. I don't know how teachers do it. I'd flip a table over and walk out on day one. And yeah, I was never taught about the Rwandan Genocide in school, and in fact, I couldn't even point Rwanda out on a map. |
| Well, hello. I need to catch up on the poems everyone used yesterday. Fridays are busy af. But anyway, today I'm going with two poems by the same person, but they're both super short and I couldn't really choose between them, so, whatever. I first read D.H. Lawrence in his novels, The Rainbow and Women in Love, which came out in 1915 and 1920 respectively. Women in Love was the sequel. They were seen as super obscene at the time, which totally confused me when I read them. I think The Rainbow was banned for a while, but a lot of book are, I guess. Times change. Anyway, I thought that D.H. Lawrence was only a novelist for a while, but then I stumbled onto some of his poetry and loved it. I guess I should've known because his imagery in the novels was pretty ridiculous. They were hard reads for me though. Anyway... my poemS for the day... ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "Self-Pity" by D.H. Lawrence I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. I feel like I shouldn't like this poem because of the repetition so close together. I hate it in my own writing, but for some reason, it just works here. I think what I like about this poem, and most of D.H. Lawrence's poems is that there's always this slight epiphany in them. I'm like, "Oh... I never thought of that." It seems like you'd think about that at some point, but I know I didn't. I never thought about self-pity in terms of only humans doing it. When I initially read this poem, I started thinking about things like Discovery Channel documentaries where the gazelles get hunted down by lions. As far as self-pity goes, I think it's a comforting thing. It's reassuring to tell yourself that you're dealing with more than other people are, and oh, how strong you are! In reality, all of us can only take so much self-pity from another person though, right? I don't expect anyone to listen to me whinge for days on end, that's why I always try to pose my vignettes in a matter-of-fact way. Whether I succeed in that or not, I don't know, but no one wears self-pity well, so I try to wear it as least often as possible. The second poem... "The Wind, The Rascal" by D.H. Lawrence The wind, the rascal, knocked at my door, and I said: My love is come! But oh, wind, what a knave thou art To make sport of me when the days of my heart Are drearisome, And wearisome. If you weren't convinced with the first poem, please be convinced now, that D.H. Lawrence writes beautifully well. This poem is actually one of the first of his I read and I just fell in love with it. I thought it was beautiful and sad and funny. It was such an odd combination of feelings. It's beautiful not only because of the imagery, but because of the story told. The excitement at thinking a lost love has come home... every knock at the door bringing on that feeling of joy. It's funny because the wind totally punked you. And then it's just said with the last two lines. Being tricked when you so desperately need truth... I just... really love this poem. Did I somehow manage to make ten lines of poetry into a long entry again? Oops. I chose these two because they're two of my favorite, but also because they show range. D.H. Lawrence has longer poems too, like, a lot longer. So you can delve into him yourself , if you wish. |
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I'm still so confused. How did they get to senior-level finance with so little know-how. I don't get it. 
People definitely tend to jump straight to the worst conclusion when any problem arises, which is why you so frequently hear, "My computer is broken!" when there's really a simple fix. 
Just why. It's so gross. We need to get you some personal finance help! This is only tangentially related and not a statement on you, but one of the nonprofits I work with consists of me making budget plans for people who were recently homeless and have just gotten back on their feet. A lot of the people I work with have only been at their job for less than a month or been in an apartment for a week or two. My role is to gather all of their financial information and then consult with them on their bills, disposable income, purchases, and stuff like that. It's shocking to see the financial decisions people make after just being homeless. I'm like, dude, you were just homeless 2 weeks ago. 
I have seen so much of the disasters it has caused with some people. I have in the past been unconsciously roped into financial situations that were most unpleasant and having to make sensible plans to unravel them.