these are crap, but eh.

[holli]

I never took you wading, that summer,
in the trickle of creek that ran
behind the house I lived in until I was eighteen.
We didn't leave our shoes lying haphazard
at the foot of the path
to wade, ankle-deep, in the cold water
or watch the slow ripple a turtle made, swimming by,
unconcerned by children.

I think I would have liked to, though,
go wading, into the little breath of woods between the houses,
where the backyards almost
pushed against each other
and honeysuckle tangled around the dead trees.
We never went. I sat
on one of the rocks that was still bare,
not yet overtaken
by the creeping vines, alone,
waiting for something.



books are what render
the shifting textures of my thoughts
translatable; and not only books,
but music, brooding singer-songwriters
bent over their guitars, complaining bitterly
that no one understands.
and not only that, not only
the lone geniuses that I reach out to
across centuries and suicides,
but culture of all sorts, the high and low,
mad poetesses and four-color heroines,
starships and sphinxes majestic
on the movie screen.

this is what I use to get my point
across: it's like clan tartans, if clan tartans
weren't an invention of the eighteenth century.
the eighteenth century's a part of it.
the beginning of people
who set themselves apart by what they read, by which words
stirred something bright within them,
which music tugged insistently at their ears.
I am more specific than they were. precise as castes,
but self-inflicted, chosen
again and again until,
in all aspects of my life, it cannot be unchosen.

so this is what I'm left with: a tendency
to think in the third person, to narrate,
to slip into iambic, unaware
I've done so.
and more than that. the neurons fire
according to the patterns that I gave them:
the connection sparks, from what you say
off-hand, an idle comment
to what I read at three AM at age eleven
and memorized, inscribed
with all the other travails of those old years.

Comments

[ahsavka.livejournal.com]

Actually, I deeply like both of them.

[imightbesheila.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if I've ever commented here, but I wanted to let you know that I love the first one. It makes me think of the days in 5th grade when you used to run behind the playground and tell all the other girls how to get honey out of honeysuckle. The fact that I'm reminded of that kind of makes me think that the poem is really ...well, you. Deep down.

Anyhow, I liked it very much.

[holli.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear lord, I'd forgotten that entirely. Wow. We used to have picnics in that little cave-like place under the pine trees, too, didn't we? God, I haven't thought about that in years.

Also, thank you!