twenty springs babe

After reading a Frank O’Hara poem

I cried for the first time in a long time.

It was sudden and 

Humbling like the nakedness of sex.

I’m naked now

Except for the wristlets that chime the keyboard 

As I write this at 4 o’clock on a Sunday in June.

And I realize I should be anywhere but here,

Especially at 4 o’clock on a Sunday in June, 

Here in the flower wall papered room

(yellow and long-faded from the drawn back curtains)

lying familiar with the bed

that’s tucked against two walls

with all the permanence of a pillar.

Here naked with the door half open

and my skin still pink from summer’s sun. 

Downstairs on the deck, my father grills chicken and my mother watches with the dog.

They’re all beneath the shade of the Magnolias.

There are so many Magnolias.

I should be anywhere but here.

I should be away in some big city with some internship 

or saving money at the job none of them know I finally quit.

It’s not my time to sit beneath Magnolias or lay about like this 

reading Frank O’Hara poems, 

and naked.

I have a future to think about.

Untitled IV, but something to do with the seasons

Romantic she is, this autumn air

she leaves the city in colors red

And whispers of winter’s indifference.

She’s the lingering, the unkempt sheets

Of late romances and the quick advances

Of night. And how bright she is!

She’ll kiss a tree gold and all will forget

That summer ever once sang.

We’re like the trees they stick in pavement:

Breathing and swaying and

isolated.

I can see the birch just now

From my single-person seat at the library, 

Ten feet from me and trapped. 

How awkward it must have been to put it there,

To shove its roots through that square patch,

To hold something so tall,

And deem it worth a 2-foot radius.

I wonder if sprinkling the pre-cut wood chips

Made them feel any better after it was done.

I’m sure you’ve seen them separated there,

The city birches cemented into some 

seven micro-forests per block. 

Have you, too, noticed that when their limbs stretch long enough to finally gather,

A man in a truck arrives

To clip them?

poem III, untitled

She’s an ancient, fat river wearing green.

Watch her next time the ice melts,

How she erupts up from within herself

As if to know what she’s doing

Despite her being born again just then.

(poem)

The impetus

How wonderful it is to be

And be partial to certain things

like white peonies in spring and eggs on toast.

To be able to say, I’m feeling lazy today,

And debate between tea and coffee.

How exciting it is, how frightening, to see

all that is tend towards an end—the way ink leaves a pen.

To witness what wasn’t as it begins

(like the peonies) and then

consider the difference.

To ask about endings and beginnings

And pretend that there’s an answer.

To breath and note the impetus,

To ask, What’s the impetus? Is there an impetus?

And find the answer hidden in a kiss somewhere,

Or perhaps among the peonies

Which had you guessing in the first place.

How much do we work today..?

Roman times: 150-200 public holidays per year

Middle Ages: 8.5-16 hours = average work week,

                    130 public (religious) holidays/year

1850s at start of Industrial Revolution: 70 hours = average work week

Today: 60 hours = average work week (U.S. Dept. Labor)

…better than the 70 hr work week in 1850s at start of Industrial Revolution, but it’s no improvement compared with the rest of human history. 

(Jerry Mander : In the Absence of the sacred: The failure of technology and the survival of the Indian nations ) 

Body, I’m sorry I’ve been bad to you. Let’s try again tomorrow.

Feeling good about solitude

If a scientist or stranger were to take a magnifying class to my life today,like I were some curious insect in the grand idea of things, they would not notice any significant difference between the way I lived today and yesterday and perhaps even tomorrow. They’d see me get up, try on a couple pairs of jeans until I decided upon the shorts again, eat a banana (or whatever unclaimed fruit was in the kitchen), carry a coffee cup around like its my mother’s diary, go to class, sleep and do it again. Yes, the order of events would vary, but they’d use probability and reason to infer that my life was, at least to some extent, passing at a steady rate. 

But today, the hour and whatever minutes of lying on the grass outside the SAC (or the “bean” if you’re a DePaul student) felt like exponential growth on the part of the self. I read Stephen King’s On Writing, which to many may sound like a half-worthwhile read, but to me it meant reading again (extra emphasis on the reading part. [Autobiography in a sentence: Reading is something I’ve always loved and yet have always put last.]) I believe that time spent in solitude is necessary in order to live the full human experience. And yet, despite my certainty, I often force myself to have lunch with friends just because, get drunk one too many nights a week just because, or fill up essential free time in my schedule just because…? well i guess because of the culture that makes solitude seem wasteful and creates societal obligation (which evolves into societal anxiety for many) where there should not be. 

So today, I set my cell phone aside (crazy, I know, badass even..) and I let myself lay on the grassy slope in between classes like a lazy, happy dog. I let the sun hit my cheek and my toes feel the grass, and I read because it was what I wanted to do, not because I should have been reading, or because it was an assignement, or because I was bored, or because I needed an escape, but because I had the time and I wanted to just be be be (alone with me).