momebie: (Kings Jack More Living)
It has been a month. HOW HAS IT BEEN A MONTH? I legit don't know how I got here. I suppose it was just one breath after another, but man, it feels like a lot of those are missing when I think back on them.


I have read a lot of poetry in that time. A LOT. Five books worth, give or take. And I've written some. I am never going to be an amazing poet, just like I'm never going to be an amazing novelist, but the more of it I write the more right it feels to be doing it and the more I feel I need to write. I don't know, there's just something about the act of writing poetry that makes me feel like I belong in a place or to a thing finally. It's helped me try to wrangle feelings I don't think I could do in prose.

For instance, when I was in Orlando I told [livejournal.com profile] theemdash that I take a lot of selfies because I'm still trying to get used to my face. Her response was a totally normal 'you've had that face a long time, dude, you should probably be used to it be by now' (paraphrased, obvs). And it's true. I have had this face a long time. I am old on the internet and in real life and you'd really think that in the last thirty-two years my mental image of myself would have lined up with the reflection I see every day. And yet, I am always vaguely shocked and disappointed by the facticity of my physical being. It's not even that I'm a fat kid. I mean, I AM a fat kid and I should really do something about that. I don't feel good about it or anything. But really it's to do with the shape of my face and the way all the bits of it are arranged. I romanticize them in my head and make them way more pleasing than they actually are.

And how do I manage expectation based on a distorted image of myself, or the feedback spiral downward that it causes. Like, I clearly lust above my station all of the time. How do I convince one of those people I'm worth dating if I don't think I am?

Also, some days I just look too much like my father for comfort, but that's a WHOLE OTHER truck of issues.

When I first moved to Boston I was telling one of the then roommates about how I want to be uploaded to a computer and they asked me if I was entirely disassociative. And I mean, no? I don't think I am. In my head the computer thing has nothing to do with my physical form being a hindrance and everything to do with time being a limited resource. I feel pretty good about being a lady and the things my body can do for me. I don't not feel at home in my body. I don't want to leave it behind. I just...want to tweak it a little so that it matches who I think I am. Though, real talk, there are a lot of things I wish I cold tweak about myself to match who I think I really am in moments of extreme hubris or whatever.

Anyway, it's a feeling I scratch at regularly, trying to understand it and I think I finally got a start on getting there.
Souls glare bright in the dim glow of living,
and easily fall prey to the glass
that would cleave them in two,
seeking out affinity in another shining surface
in vanity, letting it separate the stunning interior
from the gloaming shell,
which I think is why I never find myself
sitting in the beady eyes and pouch of a mouth
of my changeling self, as she stares
clinging covetous as mist to every mirror
and window, waiting for the invention
promised us by fiction of some
shimmering beam that might unite us again,
for the practical magic of a pure, smooth surface
to become a rippling pool she can reach through
and drown me in. I love her
more than I love myself,
for her patience and her desire.
How long has she been watching me?
My whole life, surely. Thirty-two years spent
waiting for discovery to catch up with desperation
while elsewhere we fling men into a space
just as vast as the millimeter that separates
the two halves of my whole when we reach
for one another, fingers against slick, cold skin.
How do I make myself worthy of this union?
If I had the opportunity I would swap out
every piece of myself. Rebuild the ship,
make me into something fine
and deserving of interest.
Would that upset the alchemy?
Would she know me anymore?
Would she come looking?
Finally crawl through the hard way, the shards
covered with thin, white web-like fury,
disillusioned dew glistening in the anemic yellow
bathroom light, the only evidence
there was ever any version of me at all.

So yeah, poetry. Cheaper than therapy! (I should really look into that too, though.)


And because we're already talking about poetry, here's a video Richard Siken made for his poem 'Why'. It made me laugh and it made me choke up a bit and it made me say 'yes' under my breath about a hundred times.

'Why', poem and video by Richard Siken w/ music by Marianne Dissard from Marianne Dissard on Vimeo.



HOTPANTS
HOTPANTS
HOTPANTS

Poetry is serious business, you guys.
momebie: (Batwoman Kate/Renee kiss)
Yesterday while I was being stupid and manic at work I told [livejournal.com profile] theemdash that I was looking up 1920s slang so I could write a horrible poem about this thing I can't stop thinking about, and because she's an awesome friend she was all 'OMG DO IT', even though she has no idea what any of it means! This amused me, so I told her if she won Nano I'd post it for her mocking pleasure. It's a good thing all my friends are jerks, because I don't think nice people would find that motivating. (Not that I think she wouldn't have won on her own, but it's funnier this way.) Here, without further ado, is a shitty poem I wrote due to being overinvested in stupid things. I hope you all enjoy mocking it as much as she does.

Bootlegging Baby Grand

A live wire on the giggle water,
her fingernails made the tinktinktink
noise of a warming bulb
against thick, brown, stolen bottles.
If not for our son I would leave you
for Jane, who is soft in the light as well as the dark.
Tickticktick
, she meant to say.

Vorpal, halcyon, glow.
Always warming--
no, I mean,
she never set the bedsheets on fire.
Balled up beneath her Jane looks a soft quiff.
“Doll,” I say, and wait,
because I’m not sure which one I want to answer less.

“Get your leaking chassis off that floor.
I didn’t go upstate so you could make
a mess of this place.
Stop it. Stop it,” my voice raised to wake the
dead soldier, shattered on the floor where he fell
asleep on the job. Still, she’s contrary.
“I’ll bring the bulls, bunny.

They’ll have the goods out.”
Taking her time to cool, tickticktick.
He came for you and you weren’t here.
There’s paint everywhere.
I didn’t anticipate--I’ll get the rags,
but he made me promise you’d see the mess.

“You’re not answering me, doll.”

I never lied to you,
and that’s not a check I could cash,
even if the bank wasn’t closed
for good. For the best. It was
only a matter of time before the debts
we abandoned caught up with us.
“How funny that mine caught up with you first.”

How curious that yours should be strangling me,
when all it has taken tear my attention away
is the
tick
tick
tick

bang.

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January 2020

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