Hello.
Yesterday, my mother and I went on a voyage (across land) to the beach and I sang songs that made dogs in Alaska cry. ABBA is fun, and I think I may have dislocated my brain head-banging to Knowing Me, Knowing You and possibly even broken a string on my air guitar while improvising the chorus to several jingles from a. Goo Goo Dolls (come on, Iris....totally awesome), b. Owl City (that one had some piano improv. which is way more dangerous because of all those keys and all that non-space in a car), and c. Elton John (B-B-BENNY AND THE JETS!!! also...even after 17 years of life, I still picture two lions frollicking through the forest when I hear Can You Feel the Love Tonight.) All in all, a very nice trip, despite the rain and the flooding and the giant lake outside my hotelroom that may or may not steal my car in the middle of the night while we are both sleeping. O.O
Anyways, we went to the beach today. Well, we sat on a log, huddled together on a raincoat for approximately half an hour until it commensed raining cows and meese (cats and dogs are way overated, and, let's face it: goose -- geese, moose -- ?) Then we sat in the car, staring out at the ocean with mournful eyes for a long time. We visited the Devil's Churn, aka: made a dash for the nearest bathroom, then leaned over the fence to gaze at the foaming/thrashing water below (well, Mom did. I zipped my jacket up over my face and huddled against her shoulder, trying not to blow away.)
Not a very productive day in the sense of visiting things, but it was highly enjoyable and relaxing and I WROTE SOMETHING NEW!!! :D It's about rocks and dead people and baleen (because I put my hand in one of those "Test Your Sense of Touch" boxes and touched one [I thought it was a toothbrush.])The sky drooled all over my notebook, and I am sad, but I managed to translate most of the blobs into sentences.
OOH! Another thing that happened today: We went to a restaurant for dinner, and I wrote all over my napkin, and the waitress though I was insane because of the writing all over my napkin and the fact that I dissected my sandwich and removed the mayonaise and because I thought the bathroom was creepy (you had to be there....it really was!) Don't know if I will turn the B.O.N. thing into anything literate, since it was mostly a stream of consciousness....but anyhoo....that's about it for me.
April is Poetry Writing Month, so as a challenge I am going to try to write a poem every day (nothing wonderful or long probably, but it's a way to get the creative gears grinding.) I may post them daily on here as a way to make sure I don't cheat (which I probably will anyways....) and if people are interested in reading/joining in.
So, this is the part where you read what I wrote while I was getting punched in the face by the wind; you know, the part you look forward to through my entire post and the silence between posts (sorry 'bout that.) I know, you're super excited to read it, but here's a little background:
1.apparently, I really love the word cadavers. It's creepy, I know, but it feels nice as it rolls over your tongue.
2.whales do not breathe through baleen. Baleen is for eating. I know this. You (hopefully) know this. I am not stupid, I promise. I just thought it made a really pretty phrase.
3.oysters have to be wounded (hurt) in order to make a pearl. This makes me unbelievably sad, yet it's so poetic and so beautiful. It's like in the Host; how they must sacrifice their own lives in order to reproduce and be "Mothers" It's tragic and lovely.
4.Question: what is your view on uncapitalized titles? I'm a hypocrit.
The rocks bask in an ocean of cadavers
-ten million comrades pummeled and ground
through a devil's churn:
white-hot waves crashing, bruising.
Beaten and blasted,
they are tiny grains of sand
caught in an oyster's snare.
Oysters chewing, chipping,
crying mother-of-pearl:
damaged beyond reparation,
healing despite expectation,
creating beauty out of bloody
aragonite-crystallization.
There are moments when I wish
I could be something so small,
yet so limitless:
a starfish at rock-bottom, able to rejuvenate appendages,
the lucky piece of wood given a second chance:
captured by the tide and polished smooth by the overflow,
a meager sand-dollar, worthless buried beneath the beach,
priceless in the clutch of a child: a jackpot placed in a pail.
Why must I be made of brittle bones?
--a calcium child drinking milk by the gallon,
lifting weights and severing muscles in order to become strong.
Why can't my arms be tentacles,
my legs flippers, and my torso cartilage?
Maybe then I would be able to adapt;
to drift instead of sink,
to scuba-dive with whales
breathing through baleen,
and twist myself into a sea cavern
when the rain breaks the ocean's surface.
Why can't I be as infinitesimal
and unbreakable as an organism
swallowed by sea urchins
and reborn as oxygen?
The clouds stitch shut the sun
as I travel to the place
where sky and ocean
meet in the middle;
the earth frothing beneath.
I lay flat on my back on a bed
of salt and crab shells [rattling like keratin and muscles],
rocks: useless, worthless, like bloated bodies piled in trenches
--cadavers,
sand: ground-up body parts floating over from Japan and Haiti
and just around the river-bend
--corpses, ready for dissection.
I lay, letting the ocean lick my ankles,
and watch the stratosphere ripple as droplets defy gravity,
caught in a cross-wind, falling at 45 degree angles.
I think about how lonely it would be
if all the trees tore free in the flood
and the ground gave up the fight.
What if grass refused to grow
where humans set foot,
and flowers only bloomed when someone was there
to watch?
I think about what the world would look like
if all the water left us.
--oh what a mournful sound.
I tuck blue sky into the pockets
of my skin to keep for a sunny day
when I can no longer remember the pressure
of a storm building up in the folds of my skull,
when the scent of rain fades from the inside
of my wrist and the crease of my elbow.
When my eyes start being my enemies,
and they show me waterfalls instead of rivers,
natural disasters instead of anomalies:
sunspots and fissures in the mantle [dividing tectonic plates.]
I ask you:
What if rocks were porous?
