Bad and ugly

Old drafts that need to go somewhere other than my gmail account. Posted here mostly for posterity and to see if anything can be made out of any of them. (Eventually).

Apparently valentine's day makes me emo. Awesome. All of the below are from the enormous pity party I threw for myself on Feb 14th.

* * *

It's late on a Sunday and I should be asleep.
Resting for another week of paper shuffling.
Instead I'm watching Vivian Leigh and
Clark Gable with the lights off.
Shivering on the couch in the gray-blue light,
I'm half-asleep and already missing wood-burning stoves,
iced-over cabins, reading by candlelight,
and the steady, dependable sound
of someone else's breathing.

* * *

February Fourteenth

Shoveling snow that morning, she imagined
how things might be different if three years
earlier instead of saying "Let's hang out sometime."
She had said "I'm crazy about you."
Things may be the same. She could still
be lonely in the middle of February, shoveling snow.
Or she might be living abroad, digging wells
and teaching English. They could be
sharing a walk up apartment, backpacking
the Pacific Crest trail, fighting about who forgot to feed
the dog that morning. He could have broken up with
her years ago, or find himself perparing to purpose
over dinner. At 7:15 in the morning, shoveling
snow, the important thing was simply
that she had never been able to say anything..

* * *

I'm So Emo

I don't want to hear that I'm capable,
funny, smart. A catch. Someone anyone
would be lucky to share their life with.
I'd rather sit next to you, here on the couch,
drink this bottle of wine, and watch a movie
without a happy ending.

Tenebrae

Tenebrae

Two or three thousand
gathered in one name
surrounding fifteen guttering candles
trying desperately to repel
the impending darkness

* * *

Slowly the lights are extinguished
two by two
and the world's darkness creeps in
Then--just one candle--
wavering in the draft.

* * *

That last candle gathers strength
only to be removed
Reverently carried out of their midst.
In the cold darkness,
gratitude that this story
does not end here.

* * *

Info on Tenebrae http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenebrae

I have some new ideas for this blog. I'd like to post them and have some reactions, considering one at least depends heavily on reader involvement.

1. Revive a structured poetry "assignment." This one would require a reader to contribute a new theme or challenge every week. Poems would be written during the week and a "final" (read: not rough) draft would appear every Saturday before midnight.

2. Put the kabash on the name of the blog and turn it into a writing experiment rather than a poetry experiment. Write 500 words of the young adult novel. Posting rules same as above.

3. Attempt another round of the poetry experiment, except with poems less frequently than every day.

Strong thoughts? Let me know.

I'd appreciate feedback on the new poem if anyone has any.

Revisions

"Please?" (1st Draft)
Can we please stop this conversationright now, and pretend that it never began?I'll go outside and come back in the houseagain. You can go back to stirring the soupon the stove. Instead of telling you that I think
I'm in love with you, I'll say dinner smells good.
You'll ask me how my day was, and we'll sit down together.
We'll wash the dishes and drift into our evening reading and writing.
You'll stay the night, which is what I intended
in the first place.

Please? (Revised)

Can we just stop.
Pretend that this never began.
I'll go out and come back in again.
You, stir the pot. Add another bay leaf to the soup.
I'll come drop my keys on the table--
say dinner smells good--
You, how was your day?
Have you heard back from Duluth?
We can wash the dishes, drift into the newspaper,
then the ten o'clock news.
We'll set the alarm together and you can read to me
from the yellow backed book of poems
written for people like us.
I'll drowse off until you turn out the light,
fall asleep, then I'll whisper what
started this mess in the first place.

Finale

I wish I had a really fantastic poem to post as then final piece of this blog. Heck, I wish I had a poem to end it. In classic Kelly procrastinator/slacker fashion, I don't have anything. The conclusion of this blog was ill timed with a visit from my younger brother. Our weekend was more or less filled with bowling and goofiness, so I find myself at the end of the most structured writing project I've ever embarked on without anything profound or beautiful or even quasi-profound/beautiful to say.

Thanks for your readership and your comments. Stay posted over the next week or so. I may be back with a new writing challenge for myself.

What You Remember

As Grace has reminded me "this is a project about trying your best. trial and error is part of growing. it's highly acceptable."

* * *
What You Remember
For Grace Brogan

Sometime after one
she woke to the clang of iron on iron.
Some scuffling and the single room
flooded with light and warmth.

* * *

It was simple--
and delicate--
this casual exchange of souls.
So easily damaged by saying too much
or not quite enough.

* * *

The rasp of iron,
crackling wood again.
Murmured thanks.
Rustling across the room.

* * *

Just there--outside
the single paned window--
snowflakes break the gathering dark.
By morning their footprints will be gone.

* * *

Wild Geeseby Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

My Pontiac's Trunk

My Pontiac's Trunk

Containts two twelve packs of Fanta,
exploded from the cold.
A folder of notes from job interviews. Three
pairs of black high heels and my second
favorite mini-skirt. One hundred and forty
pounds of sand. My sleeping bag and camping chair.
A bag of rice and beans tucked inside a cast-iron skillet.
Old term papers and scratched CDs. A make-up bag.
File boxes from Office Max. Three Frisbees and
a pair of snowshoes. Somewhere near the bottom
half of a torn photograph. Me, in a tank top and skirt,
smiling, with a strong arm around my shoulders.

* * *

The Sighs One Hears In Early Morning
After Jay Hopler

The Honorable Miss Brogan

It’s almost three
And the moon now drifting through the sky is
Like the hum one hears in distant music: familiar
And strange and wonderful—
❦
Being alive is a gift—
But it’s not so grand, as presents go. It’s the only one
We will ever be forced to return.
Who’s to say how long this smudge of ash will keep?
❦
The hovering silver body has changed to gold.
The music—no, the space is dissonant.
❦
That’s me, the voice whispering in the garden with a quiet rhythm
And melody; nearer, my father’s footsteps,
Ca-lunk ca-lunk on a heavily-worn path of clay
And stone, what might have been youth once.
The wind is taking up. Mother has written TIME
In the trail’s scattered dirt.

Beibei, 2004

Beibei, 2004

On Thanksgiving day of 2004
she made one transatlantic phone call.
Her mother answered and shouted because she was so excited.
Kevin's on the cell phone, calling from Durham,
she explained. It's the first time we've heard in months.
Here, let me hold the phones up to one another
and maybe you two can shout through to each other.
The resulting static hiss was loud enough
to startle Thug, the Chinese security guard
and make her whip the phone away from her head.
Mom, what were you thinking? That wasn't going to work.
Honey, I'm sorry, I thought
it would be nice if, just this once,
you two could speak to one another on a holiday.

* * *

What's in My Journal

William Stafford

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean

Things, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.

But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.

Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous

discards. Space for knickknacks, and for

Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.

Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected

anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind

that takes genius. Chasms in character.

Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above

a new grave. Pages you know exist

but you can't find them. Someone's terribly

inevitable life story, maybe mine.