July 04, 2012

Fours


Happy 4th of July, Internet! Although it feels oddly not like July, not like the 4th, and the 4th is my lucky day of any month but whatever. So much surpassed yesterday that I feel compelled to author a post before I head out to find watermelon vodka and an actual watermelon, marry the two, and get completely tanked today with Johnny and Nilla and company. I just need a drunk day. That sounds so miserable and Raymond Carver-inspired but it's true: one middle of the week drunk day in the sea of sober Arena-building days might just be what the doctor has in order.  (Above pictured: tuna tartar with quail egg, Brooklyn, and an excellent pint for $3.50, Manhattan - living the life, I say.)

So yesterday a gamut of things happened. Please note: I feel as though I'm using words with which I'm unfamiliar of their meaning and spelling: surpass, compel, gamut. But I'm not in the mood for worrying about word usage so so be it. Primarily, I heard from Greg. Hm. That is not the primary instance of yesterday but it did happen, and my heart did thump differently and I have no idea if/when I will ever see him again but at least he didn't clamber off my radar never to be mentioned again. And each word he wrote crossed me as deliberate, as always, and I'm wondering slightly if I am coming across in my communications as too busy to have any involvement with him. This may be the case. I do not mean to, however my life is completely swollen with many things and perhaps I should find him, sit next to him and explain that my feelings for him are strong enough that he could slide into one of my rare priority slots. I don't know. I just don't know.

Really, the main (actual primary) thing that happened yesterday is that I fell again and am falling, again and again and again and again, head over heels in love with poetry. I would give anything for poetry. Suzanne has asked me to take the charge on communicating with an organization very institutional to New York called The Poetry Project and so I reached out to my incredible professor Sharon from the New School (who is now also teaching at Brooklyn College and who by far pressed significance to the essence of my life both in my New School course with her and in my independent studies with her; she fucking raises the bar when it comes to excellent poetry constructive criticism and I've never met anyone like her, ever) and Sharon immediately replied that of course she knows someone affiliated with The Poetry Project and right away, emails fluttered about and I managed to make contact with her contact. Suzanne was proud, and now I must introduce her somehow to Sharon because while bragging I did drop that Sharon studied under Ginsberg which sent Suzanne, who wrote a thesis paper on The Beats, into a frenzy. God, sometimes life just makes sense.

So much communication happened yesterday regarding poetry that it sunk and soared my heart. I am elated to think I may become an intrinsic member of an elite party I would call "the poets" someday. Maybe not now? But perhaps soon. Suzanne and I were back and forth about the creative process and about its highs and lows, and I mentioned needing desperately to somehow pool all of my poetry. I need to, so badly. These precious entities are so alone at this point - they may be back to back on pages in a notebook, or perhaps they coexist on the same shelf, but they don't know one another. Not now. They need to. And there is only one conduit to make that happen, who is madly typing this blog entry right now.

I am so desperately in love with poetry. I cannot quantify or qualify my feelings for it. There is no such measure. I walk each day with lines of poetry forming in my brain. I literally cannot focus my eyes on something without a piece of poetry writing itself. This might sound awkward, like a syndrome of some sort or a damage to my mind, but it impacts me more than anything else could hope to do. Someday this damage will manifest itself and someone will treasure it? But for the moment, all I know is that I wake up every day next to it - it tugs at me, and it keeps me strong.

July 02, 2012

Steps

Overloaded with emotion today. Like, brimming and overflowing. It's 9:31PM and I really only have a little while to be here, because sleep is seriously required at this point. Mandatory Saturdays here forward, until opening, and a burst pipe tonight in the Nets Campus area doesn't make any of our lives any simpler. But whatever...listening to the Old Canes again on my phone with a glass of wine and heat raking over me like a massive swarm of bees. Stinging me. Not kidding. Sweat is resting on my skin. It makes me unhappy.

Overloaded with emotion because I think Greg is now back in my sphere and I haven't heard from him but that makes complete sense since he's been gone forever and has experienced what he has and probably returned to a several hundred item long list of things to accomplish upon return. Not thinking about it. Or, am, but am shoving it aside. It's like I said previously: this is either happening, or it isn't. It is rather out of my control. So that is that on that.

Work becomes increasingly painful. I am swamped with things to do (we all are) and I oftentimes think jabbing my jugular with a sharp object would be less bloody. (And god, could the back of my neck GET more sweaty in this hot apartment? Need ice packs strapped on. Hey, summertime. What's up you brutal ASSHOLE.) Can't find a hair thing (rubber band) in the apartment though I'm not looking too hard, just whining and moaning. I have nearly resorted back to biting my nails as I did when I was a young girl. God, I thought I grew out of that.

But today, I will say...some incredible things did happen. When I throw that word out there, I hope it's understood that it means many things (like, I became incredibly irritated with a coworker that is on his last straw with me, I became incredibly ecstatic to share a poem with a friend, and I ate incredible sushi before crawling home tonight, all incredibles) and so I feel justified yet again for being on this confusing planet.

Poem thing. I cannot stop myself now, especially as I age and age, from feeling more and more like I should be classifying myself as a poet. Maybe I'm giving myself way way way too much credit, but you know, at some point this should have been inevitable. I have been a prolific writer for so long that at some point, KB, call it like it is.

So, what happened is that the LitQuake organization for which I've submitted a bunch of work asked me for some "fun facts" from the editors. I sent them, and one of mine mentioned an adjective that Sharon years ago marked out on a poem and recommended to me that I'm "too good for that word." How amazing, she thrills me. Anyway, that was one of my fun facts and I told Suzanne half of this in an email and she begged to know the adjective. So I shared the whole poem with her. Here:


vacancy agrees with her.
she's got a sore throat,
stirs odysseys into her cup of tea,
and some Cointreau.

vacancy agrees with her.
she stirs tea, old odysseys,
and some Cointreau.

she's brave.
she's bending down to tie a lace.
she's been here before,
plotting plants, sifting seeds, pulling weeds
in a kitchen sweaty as dawn.

she's here,
battling brevity, bravery and bewilderment.

"i want my money back," she says
slapping the sweaty barely-beating heart
on the store counter.
"i'm afraid you didn't buy that here," the sales clerk says.

she offers me a cigarette, bends a knee
to adjust the heel of a shoe,
cupping a hand on my shoulder to balance her weight,
her stomach a porcelain plate.

red licks the rims of the glass
as we sip wine, suck the nectar down.
either way, a crimson tornado
twists in the small of the glass.

she stirs a liturgy into the glass,
watching the words drip down
a drop of honey,
a sip of tea, like the whisper
of the suicidal sea.

Suicidal was the word in question with Sharon, who told me I was too good for that word. But here was Suzanne's reply to me sending her this poem, and while this poem was penned back so far that I can barely remember writing it (I think in 2007? 2008?) I am still the Owner of it, so I may as well park myself next to it as an accomplishment because yeah, I did write it. So, whatever. But, here was S's reply, which soared me to so many levels the rest of the day. Because I affected someone, slightly. Means a lot.

Your poem. I LOVE. Really, really lovely. and funny. and tragic. Honestly, I am no poet, but I don't mind the adjective.