This journal entry dated
fourteen years back
doesn't sound like me,
but I remember writing it.
The sloppy half-script arises
from wavering dedication
to the subject;
my sarcasm was so blunt.
Dog-eared by pretty,
the journal with a red floral border
and a white decanter on each cover
is a coffin of sorts.
Once, 11-17-97 was
the javelin tip of
my blood, flesh, and breath.
Today, it's but a scale among scales,
a measure among measures,
curled up as tightly as its brethren
nestling in perpetuity.
I can't quite put my finger on
this relation to a past self -
the present is so seamless,
while history's iterations
unfold like paper dolls
linked side-by-side.
The devil on my shoulder wants
to ask do we know her?
Sure, we shared some memories
but - that's not who
we are anymore. After all,
Descartes wasn't
because he thought.
But the angel pipes up
he was no amnesiac either.
I think
I must be an illusion.
Truth is, I don't know
if pulling on the thread
will just unravel this
whole damn pattern.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Liminal
What microbial thoughts
reside in the seams of each day,
overlooked and fertile,
driven by a force more primal than will?
As a child, my mother taught me
how to crack open the bones
that lent her hearty soups flavor.
The smooth, gray, curving armor of each rib
split easily from end to end,
its splintered edges offering up
the soft marrow residing within,
the medulla ossium ruba,
an interstitial secret
bringing warmth to our daily needs.
The same warmth pulses
within the recesses of the darkest nadir,
the deep of the Mariana.
Her fissures are the conduit,
umbilical cord to our molten Heart that sustains
and attests, "Revelation comes in not a flood,
but a trickle."
Wednesday afternoon -
these days are preset, each hour
molded by the heavy hand of intent.
Interwoven are the minutes,
mere and precious, between purposes,
between points, undefined,
when suddenly
I am in the primordial state myself,
thoughts teeming and subliming,
luxuriating in the richness of free-form,
until the rift
closes up again.
reside in the seams of each day,
overlooked and fertile,
driven by a force more primal than will?
As a child, my mother taught me
how to crack open the bones
that lent her hearty soups flavor.
The smooth, gray, curving armor of each rib
split easily from end to end,
its splintered edges offering up
the soft marrow residing within,
the medulla ossium ruba,
an interstitial secret
bringing warmth to our daily needs.
The same warmth pulses
within the recesses of the darkest nadir,
the deep of the Mariana.
Her fissures are the conduit,
umbilical cord to our molten Heart that sustains
and attests, "Revelation comes in not a flood,
but a trickle."
Wednesday afternoon -
these days are preset, each hour
molded by the heavy hand of intent.
Interwoven are the minutes,
mere and precious, between purposes,
between points, undefined,
when suddenly
I am in the primordial state myself,
thoughts teeming and subliming,
luxuriating in the richness of free-form,
until the rift
closes up again.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Season Poems
Season Poem 1: Fall
Some days in autumn,
the season is tugged along by
strong gusts whose fingers catch in the foliage,
and loosen leaves that have ripened to a rich red,
or yellow like the soft peel of an apple,
speckled like an egg
on tempestuous afternoons,
clouds roam across the celestial plain,
the herd kicking up a soft flurry that touches down
on our faces, heavier than mist
morning arrives in the gritty leftovers of a storm.
With the rhythmic cadence
of a cat's tongue against milk,
wandering sandals
slap the ground's grainy detritus
onto dry soles
in search of a daily coffee
the slate of the sky reflects each
slick slab of asphalt that
daily collects another layer of the shedding season,
a tessellation
of the reds,
apple peel yellows,
and the specked eggs
that march on until November.
Season Poem 2: Fracture
There is a time of stripping away,
when we get to see
the structure underneath.
In spring,
the spine of each leaf
lengthens
and bisects, lengthens
a bit more,
and continues to split
and elongate at a snail's pace
until it is broad like an open palm
and ridged like a coastline.
In fall,
the retreating crawl
of lush coverage
reveals the spidery lattice from which
life sprang,
months ago -
knobby fingers are hardy as
veins in an infinite cycle,
begetting capillaries,
always birthed from arteries,
thicker than water swirling
in a subtly numbered,
dedicated loop.
I can't say
it doesn't bring me to tears
to see nature's ellipsis camouflaged
against the cloak of each season,
as summer beats slow,
lub-dub shuffle drags long,
like tree branch shadows
at noon in winter.
Some days in autumn,
the season is tugged along by
strong gusts whose fingers catch in the foliage,
and loosen leaves that have ripened to a rich red,
or yellow like the soft peel of an apple,
speckled like an egg
on tempestuous afternoons,
clouds roam across the celestial plain,
the herd kicking up a soft flurry that touches down
on our faces, heavier than mist
morning arrives in the gritty leftovers of a storm.
With the rhythmic cadence
of a cat's tongue against milk,
wandering sandals
slap the ground's grainy detritus
onto dry soles
in search of a daily coffee
the slate of the sky reflects each
slick slab of asphalt that
daily collects another layer of the shedding season,
a tessellation
of the reds,
apple peel yellows,
and the specked eggs
that march on until November.
Season Poem 2: Fracture
There is a time of stripping away,
when we get to see
the structure underneath.
In spring,
the spine of each leaf
lengthens
and bisects, lengthens
a bit more,
and continues to split
and elongate at a snail's pace
until it is broad like an open palm
and ridged like a coastline.
In fall,
the retreating crawl
of lush coverage
reveals the spidery lattice from which
life sprang,
months ago -
knobby fingers are hardy as
veins in an infinite cycle,
begetting capillaries,
always birthed from arteries,
thicker than water swirling
in a subtly numbered,
dedicated loop.
I can't say
it doesn't bring me to tears
to see nature's ellipsis camouflaged
against the cloak of each season,
as summer beats slow,
lub-dub shuffle drags long,
like tree branch shadows
at noon in winter.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Identity in a New Land
Hot on the heels of the busiest three months I've had in a while, I'm finally taking a huge - HUGE - breather and escaping to the Pacific Northwest with the hubby. YES, two months after tying the knot, we are finally going on our honeymoon!! For the first time in a long while, we are really getting a chance to spend some together outside of the shroud of familiarity in which we've wrapped ourselves...no kitties (sorry, Grundton & Nicholas), no Philly students, no stifling summer sweat of the east coast - hell, even the beer is different up here.
Actually, lots of things are different. There is an undefined, unsettled quality about experiencing a city like Seattle when you've just come from a place as stereotyped and easily labeled in the collective American mind as Philadelphia. My subjective, uninformed impression of Seattle is limited to a few key facts - rainy, near Canada, setting of Frasier, and birthplace of Starbucks and grunge - that are limited in their connotative reach, paling in comparison to the public impression of Philadelphia as dangerous, rough around the edges, blue-collar, and unrefined. Granted, Chris and I spent a handful of hours in a limited part of the city, after an exhausting day that began at 4:30am eastern time and ended with a three-hour time difference; nonetheless, as powerful as first impressions are, I certainly came away from our first day in Seattle distinctly lacking one.
Atop the Space Needle yesterday afternoon, the presence of the groups of teens loitering around Seattle Center prompted a discussion about identity that Chris and I had left off over a year ago, at a time when I was struggling with my own religious identity (or rather, nonreligious identity, as I had previously identified as atheist). The process of learning relies on the honing of extremes - we take in the rules of the world first by polarizing complex ideas, and only as they become more familiar to us do we learn the exceptions that add nuance to our understanding, in effect creating more finely-grained bifurcations of what we take in. I believe that the process of self-discovery follows this pattern. As tweens and teens we take on oversized personalities and try on the costumed labels created by society to see what fits. We clumsily turn outward to begin that attempt at finding ourselves, leading to those cringe-worthy phenomena (and lucrative commercial niches) like black lipstick, spiked chokers, and, on the other side of the hill, pink polo shirts with the collars popped and plaid shorts (both unisex looks, natch). As we mature, the identities we try on become less clownish, but I still believe there is a very fine line at which we stop looking to external dictates to tell us who we are, and actually start examining fully inward. Truly, I think this is a difficult journey requiring a lot of self-awareness and courage, and as weak creatures as we are, no doubt there are many who are never able to fully get to cross this line in their lifetimes.
(To be continued...)
Actually, lots of things are different. There is an undefined, unsettled quality about experiencing a city like Seattle when you've just come from a place as stereotyped and easily labeled in the collective American mind as Philadelphia. My subjective, uninformed impression of Seattle is limited to a few key facts - rainy, near Canada, setting of Frasier, and birthplace of Starbucks and grunge - that are limited in their connotative reach, paling in comparison to the public impression of Philadelphia as dangerous, rough around the edges, blue-collar, and unrefined. Granted, Chris and I spent a handful of hours in a limited part of the city, after an exhausting day that began at 4:30am eastern time and ended with a three-hour time difference; nonetheless, as powerful as first impressions are, I certainly came away from our first day in Seattle distinctly lacking one.
Atop the Space Needle yesterday afternoon, the presence of the groups of teens loitering around Seattle Center prompted a discussion about identity that Chris and I had left off over a year ago, at a time when I was struggling with my own religious identity (or rather, nonreligious identity, as I had previously identified as atheist). The process of learning relies on the honing of extremes - we take in the rules of the world first by polarizing complex ideas, and only as they become more familiar to us do we learn the exceptions that add nuance to our understanding, in effect creating more finely-grained bifurcations of what we take in. I believe that the process of self-discovery follows this pattern. As tweens and teens we take on oversized personalities and try on the costumed labels created by society to see what fits. We clumsily turn outward to begin that attempt at finding ourselves, leading to those cringe-worthy phenomena (and lucrative commercial niches) like black lipstick, spiked chokers, and, on the other side of the hill, pink polo shirts with the collars popped and plaid shorts (both unisex looks, natch). As we mature, the identities we try on become less clownish, but I still believe there is a very fine line at which we stop looking to external dictates to tell us who we are, and actually start examining fully inward. Truly, I think this is a difficult journey requiring a lot of self-awareness and courage, and as weak creatures as we are, no doubt there are many who are never able to fully get to cross this line in their lifetimes.
(To be continued...)
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