a poetical response to joan of arcadia :)

What we spent
Was wasted--never.
What we lost--
Was gold.
Moving forward,
Feeling nowhere,
Flaming rage--
And cold.
Cold because
I'm cultivating
Icy, frozen smiles.
Rage because a
Passion-killing
Takes a painful while...

Just long enough to melt the ice,
Make way to be renewed.
A balancing, a mellowing,
A hope--true Love is true.

A silly sea poem

i've got a new diseases: Potter's Lung. aka, my throat's been hurting ever since pottery class on monday. may actually be sickness and not just dry dustiness...hopefully not. :(

anyway, here's a goofy rhymey poem:

Charted waters hide their beasts
As well as seas unseen--
The terrors twenty thousand deep
Are the same from green to green.

And hurricanes are comin', come,
To blow your boat of-course:
You mapped with all the might you have--
But it fled at Triton's force.

You know just where you want to go,
And how to read the sky,
But travel long enough, and you'll
Be-wildered by and by.

Widget and Gadget

Greetings! it is a rainy fall afternoon here! came home from work and immediately sat down with a nice hot cup of ovaltine...followed immediately by a hot cup of mint tea :) and a couple no-bakes. yay!!
so, pictures 1 and 2 relate to the poem following. pictures 3 and 4 are more wrecky cakes from our friendly neighborhood grocery store (someday i'll quit being lazy and actually send them to cakewrecks, where you will be able to view them with clever captions, etc. but for now, here they are, unadorned :) and picture 5 is me with a zucchini baby! didn't grow this personally :( not by a long shot, but a friend of daniel's did and we were the lucky recipients! double yay!
a poem, about just about giving up on ever finding the right love for you (oh, and may i just say that in The Night Circus, there are twins nicknamed Poppet and Widget, which is just wonderful:) :

A winsome widget puzzled over this:
If I'm unique, who can I hope to kiss?
Impractically scatter-brained but sweet
Could cancel out. But there's no one to meet!
I may as well be locked up in a tower,
Growing grayer, lonelier, tear-free and sour.
Bring on the dragons! There's no prince for me
However guarded, or however free.
But as Widget whiled away her time in groans,
A gallant Gadget heard her mournful tones
And, coming closer, fell so quick in love
His first words were, "Hello! My turtledove!"
And Widget, overwhelmed with gratitude,
O'er looked his hasty fall--for she fell, too.

Finished Unfinished Sonnet

good late-evening (and 5 minutes before i am in bed, ready for sweet sleep, yay!)

so i thought i'd written a sonnet earlier, but cheated it out of four lines (messy handwriting, whoops)...making it a...Sonnetette? it's about seasons of depression, sorrow, etc.

Uncovering the rhythmic undertow
The seasons change again--and this you know--
But deeper down, beneath the drying leaves,
Unfolding hibernations, hidden griefs
That surface--though remaining unperceived--
In disappearing acts and taking-leave,
No reason given, vanished like a thief--
These times of solitude distrust relief.

I've sensed eternal winter (rarely spring)
Yet, after all, found life where death had been.

Response to Ecclesiastes

Happy Halloween!
this poem is not actually meant to slam poetry, just pride. :) i read a couple chapters in ecclesiastes this morning.

What is vanity, if not a word
Stuck flat to paper, neither seen nor heard?
Unbreathed, thus lifeless. Drifting disconnect--
Can't move nor move. What else did you expect?
Oh poet, loving sounds more than the voice
Of someone speaking all you planned to write,
Got garbled up by jealousy. Your choice:
To listen, let each syllable ignite
The dead-wood, brittle pride that stamps and swears
You are alone, unique, in all your cares,
That what you feel, adorned in metaphor
More wise, more beautiful--well, simply, more--
Or live in vain, self-soothing sentiment
Unknown to all but you, your audience.

Pizza and Palabras

tonight's activities centered around making eggplant/mushroom pizza (from-scratch crust, woot!) and watching joan of arcadia...the beginning of season two, whoops. once you start, you just HAVE to know what's going to happen next!!! because the characters are so sweet and sometimes just need hugs!! i won't say more, you should watch it.
anyway, afterwards, and a particularly touching scene that pretty much made me cry, here is a song. it started off as a response to joan, though, and then morphed into something about pride again...so it probably doesn't work at all, but i'm trying to convince myself that it does...because ultimately, it's about relationships deepening (another Joan theme)--and what happens when you start getting close to someone. coming up against fear and pride, of course, learning how to be honest...so...maybe it works:

I. You told me your secret. Now
You say you regret it. How?
Cause I--I can't forget it, and
I just want to hold you. Now...

II. There are things that I've not told you
Even now I'm afraid that you
Will discover I'm not what you need or want
And I'm living a lie but I don't trust what is true.

CH. Do you remember that day
When love was less about loving than play?
When we thought we were the only two
And I loved me and you loved you

III. You have a past and I've got my own
And everyone feels that they're all alone
And it's every man for his wounded self
But I long to be free to love someone else
but me.

IV. There are aspects of me you will never need
Like my anger, bitterness, pride, and greed
I'm broken and I may not ever mend
But I promise I'll love you until the end.

Ch. I've heard the poets all say
That love is a gift that will never decay
I pray, and I hope, and I know it's true
Cause you love me and I love you.

Pride, and not the Leonine Kind

i was mean today, and have so much pride to repent of. (of which to repent, right, i know, grammar-police! ;)
step one: admit that i'm not that great at 'Just Dance,' but love it anyway.
step two: learn to really believe that i'm not better than others just because i (imagine that i) work harder. [it's sooooo difficult!!!] there are other priorities. like kindness. and, duh, humility.
step three: quit making mean faces in response to hearing certain people's names, no matter how much i don't like them. what if they find out?!?!? it doesn't matter if they wouldn't care!!
step four: learn to realize it's not okay to indulge in dislike of someone, if that dislike comes with a healthy side of pride.

i don't really know what i'm saying. except, i'm a pride-addict, and here is a poem about it:

Fits of frantic anarchy
Or razor-sharp control,
A bout of bargain comedy,
A terror of the soul.
You cheap-and-cheerful chatterbox,
You Silent-as-the-Grave,
You both, you boast, you justify
'Cause you are all you crave.

For every two lacks one, for three,
But fantasize they're four--
As I imagine empires (mine)
In virtue. Truth, I'm poor--
And lonely at the top of what
I now know as below,
Napoleon of Nada but
The pride that makes me crow.
Yes, that's another emperor:
The man become a beast,
Ten thousand leaves of grass consumed
Before he was released.
But we learn nothing, hazard-hap,
Have hardly history.
The next false king to fertilize
That field may be me.

Beware corruption (it's too late)
We're mired, moired, mud--
And chewing our achievements
As a cow (you guessed it) cud.

But listen--there was always hope,
And hope will ever be.
First, count yourselves as nothing.
Then count sparrows.
One...two...three...