Other Stuff

Odds and Ends

leftovers can still be interesting...

These are all of the poems and other stuff that didn't fit with anything else, either because there weren't enough of them centered on one emotion, or because I wrote them for the look or sound instead. These often take longer to write, actually, because I am more concerned with the rhyme and meter.

Poems

I will never return to that box, that grey place where nothing's even real - not if I can help it. That is the death to be feared; not the ending of a body, but the death of your soul.

i chose to break
Pandora's Box
and feel for true
and live for real
and oh it hurts
but this pain is mine
and precious

This one is so general I wasn't sure what to do with it.

my fingers itch
and poetry pours
it hurts so sweet
to feel this hard
i don't understand

and who can live this way?
but i cannot any other
that box held me for too long
i will not go back.

I... was involved in a rather serious car accident. No one was hurt, but it was horribly frightening. And then I found out that, on the same day, three people I tangentially knew had died in a car wreck. These are the result.

worst is the knowing
    oh god we're going to hit
there and done you only shake
    it's coming down
or bleed or die but
    go back go back
knowing   you scream

and we ask
Who decides?
why she likes me
who we are
what i looked like
why they're gone

it doesn't matter
anyway
questions come
to salve the pain

I just couldn't find the right place for this one...

where has my poetry gone?
i cannot feel it
here in my trembling hands
the Voice has deserted me,
                 my heart
and i stumble through the dark
unable to form the words
and weep, soundless.

A meditation on the nature of the Internet...

i walk the spaces
in this web of blue words
people without places
speak soundless words

I've been reading a book on lucid dreaming; I think that's what inspired this poem.

When dreams are cold and old and dead,
are you afraid to sleep?
(this she said, and bowed her head,
and made as if to weep.)

(and then she frowned, tears overwhelmed,
and to herself replied)
No, for dreams are wisdom's realm;
their meanings must be tried.

I attended a very strange conference this summer; it combined mathematics and art. While I was there, I scribbled these poems on the back of the program. The first is simply what I feel to be the poetry of a sphere; the second describes the abstract industrial sculptures of Charles Perry; and the third is complete nonsense, using some words I saw while I was there.

Spherical Conciousness
as one i stand
smooth self-immolation
no joins, connections
alone in wholeness

steelflow
ponderous soars
sliding intimate into cityspace

Omodo intercine
cold seeping within;
Kori backlash
light flowing over

This poem tries to capture the feel of the ending of a school year, as the last person steps out of the building and locks the door behind him.

silent classroom
sunlight echoes off the walls
and in the hall a paper settles
pale green stripes close
on dreams and despairs
flown to mailboxes
and books are straightened
doors fall closed
months wait for new hopes

This poem is about the process of writing itself, the feeling of inspiration, whether it's poetry being written or anything else.

little stories
hoping doing thoughts
of twinklerains
darkenfloods
and other sweetwaters
tasting the colors
of the mindflow

This poem is also about the process of writing, although it doesn't really apply to the digital world.

Clear blue lines
waiting
Open for the fulfillment
of blacksilver
scribbles

I really like this poem, although I'm not even really sure what it's about. Glory, perhaps?

open eyes (that)

will not see

blue (into) eternity

       (and all the skies

       were in her eyes

       and her mind

       was on the sun)

I wasn't sure what to do with this one -- it has connotations of both lonliness and relationships, but the subject was an eerie dream. I was the leader of a faction of political rebels inside a boarding school for the wealthy. The conflict became open warfare, including the use of "midges"-- tiny bombs. I woke up sobbing and shaking with horror.

Screams of the dying
haunt the dreams of my dreams.
Children fighting in the halls,
Young ones dying for the cause;
Storms of midges blow it all away.
I run.
If I am lost, so is the revolution---
but I hear them crying.
What have I lost?

This poem was inspired by an M. C. Escher print and an odd, contemplative day I had.

I am the pool of memory
lying still
reflecting
trees and sky and clouds
a world away
a lone fish stirs within

Sometimes school seems trés pointless, no?

School

The empty ringing
of hollow bells
and learning that is not true

brightness crushed
like lightbulbs
vaccuumed into nothing

These two poems were written more for the sounds they make than the meaning--I had originally intended to write only one, but I couldn't choose between them.
Blue the ocean Blue the sky Blue the tears You did not cry Blue the eyes You blinked unseen Blue the words You did not mean	Blue the ocean Blue the sky Blue the tears That I did cry Blue the eyes That turned away Blue the hope That went astray

These are another two mostly written for the way they sound. The words just popped into my head one day, and wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote them down.
I am bitter drink me slowly taste the meaning of your life oblivion my bitter lover agony my bitter wife	I am bitter drink me slowly taste the ending of your life emptiness my bitter lover lonliness my bitter wife

Quotations

What lies before you and what lies behind you are tiny matters compared to what lies within you.
-----Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imagination is the eye of the soul.
-----Joseph Joubert

"Breakfast again. Sooner or later, it's always breakfast."
-----Margaret Mahy, The Other Side of Silence

I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
-----Hamlet, Hamlet

When you say words a lot they don't mean anything. Or maybe they don't mean anything anyway, and we just think they do.
-----Delirium, The Sandman, issue 41

If you don't have a name, what do people call you? I mean, do they just wave and smile, or jingle little silver bells, or what?
-----Delirium, The Sandman, issue 43

Don't think! Just pick up that phone and make it happen!
-----Scully, The X-Files: Fight The Future

Owl's sad things

Chairs with broken legs
Songs that cannot be sung
because the words have been forgotten
Spoons that have fallen behind the stove
and are never seen again
Books that cannot be read
because some of the pages have been torn out
Clocks that have stopped
with no one near to wind them up
Mornings nobody saw
because everybody was sleeping
Mashed potatoes left on a plate
because no one wanted to eat them
And pencils that are too short to use.
-----Arnold Lobel, Owl at Home

I wish those were the only things to be sad about...

Musings

Freedom is such a relative thing -- in evry country, children laugh and play in the sun.

Bodies are devices that generally stand in the way of personhood.

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