elizab08blog’s Blog

so i decided to move out of edublogs

but i will still be blogging

my new blog is: starsandlilies.blogspot.com
everything on edublogs will be there, as well as some brain waves & randomness…

if you follow my edublogs, feel free to check out my blog spot as well.

happy writing

I wrote this in the morning on the bus. You would think that the poem would be happier. It was sunny and I wasn’t at all in a bad mood. Who knows…. when the words come, they come….

I move slower than myself in spirit form
because it hurts to be away from my body for so long.
It’s harder to bear separation when you’re not used to it,
when your heart has never had a piece wrenched from it,
when your soul is still as unblemished as the day
you tumbled from your mother’s body.
A piece of her was ripped out then, too.
You were unaware that one day you would cry out
because your spirit was being torn from you,
leaving you only to wish that being meant you never felt pain.

This was also written during and after seeing Rita speak. I hadn’t written in a little while, at least, not poetry. But this moved me. So I wrote.

The father and the son walk through the crowded rows of books.
They both have the remnants of a smile resting on their faces
from some shared inside joke.
They’re reuniting- boy returning home after years of schooling
that taught him less than his mama and her waltzing feet did.
And father- just happy to see that his son is growing up
into perhaps, just perhaps, more of a man than he was.

The son holds his jacket in the crook of his arm- the slight breeze doesn’t bother him-
and his hands are thrust into his pockets.
And like a dutiful son, his collared shirt tucked into his belted jeans.

But he smiles, watching his father squint at the small letters
on the back of the book,
And with a chuckle, plucks his father’s bifocals out of the breast pocket
With a movement too quick to feel his heart beat.
But knowing, assured, that it’s there
Although for how long, indeterminate.

I wrote this in Harvard Book Store on Mass Ave. while watching a little girl pick a book out with her mother. I was there for a poetry reading by Rita Dove, who by the way, is amazing. She speaks as though she’s singing, some inner rhythm pulsing through her.

She twirls her hair between her index and her thumb,
shifting her weight from one foot to the other
before choosing a book by her mother’s bidding.
It’s Calvin and Hobbes, not a dense read by any means,
but her mother doesn’t stop her from sitting down
in the purple cushioned window seat,
propping her feet up, and flipping through
the pages and pages of pictures.
I can see her mother browsing in the corner of my eye
But it’s the little girl who makes me want to read again.

Sometimes I wonder if you’re actually here.
Or if you’re floating between two worlds
not really sure which one is real.

Am I some mirage you stumbled upon
in a drunken state, that you see
but don’t understand how it got there
or whether or not it will disappear in the next moment?

Is the effervescent irridescence ethereal
or do those shiny things we wish on last forever?
Is forever really what it seems, or are those
supposedly logical people relying on an
infinity that doesn’t actually exist?

Sometimes I wonder if you actually see me
or if I’m transparent, like a fog hanging over
a still-sleeping town.

i hate not knowing what i’m going to do with myself this summer….. argh.

………..but its really my fault. so i have no right to complain

Hi… I have no idea who reads this, and if anyone does. But if you do, I’m sorry that I haven’t written in so long. But hopefully I’m back School is about to be out, and these past few weeks have been reallly reallly stressful.
Blogging/ writing in general helps me to relieve some of that. I’m actually thinking of moving this blog to a place a little more open… maybe blogspot or something, who knows? but for now I’m staying with edublogs I’m not going anywhere yet.

sooo… a little while ago, my AP Drawing class went on a field trip to a cemetary up the street from Forrest Hills Station in Boston. We were told to just go out in pairs and find a little spot and do a couple of drawings. Afterwards, you could do whatever you wanted: read, nap, write, eat, whatever…
I decided to write, and a poem came out of it. argh….. don’t remember the date. I want to say it was the 3rd of April… but I’m really not sure.

Listen to the wind.
Let it say what it has to before interrupting,
thinking that you know everything.
You, with your pen in your hand:
Take time to watch the waves dance with the fish
before painting them like someone important enough
to think you can capture this on canvas.
Let the rain touch you, run down your face.
Lift the wobbly glass to your mouth
and taste the reality that you will never
truly know.
Understand that not even by changing the background,
or the lighting, or the day, or time, media, or colors,
can you ever get it right.

L’Éternel est mon berger:
je ne manquerai de rien.
Il me fait reposer dans le
I hope you’re lying in green pastures.

You know, they read that
psalm at the wake,
the deacons and the deaconesses
walking single file into the church.
It wasn’t a large affair,
I mean, it was a big church
but the service was small, humble, like you.

The pastor was supposed to console us.
I guess in a way he did, how he kept
rambling on about the night.
I wanted him to say something like
“It’s when it gets as dark as it can get
the stars come out.” But he didn’t.

He just kept going on and on about the night.

I wonder what souls look like:
where they go. Is yours a wanderer?
Is it floating, an effervescent bubble,
Like the one she just popped by
coming into my room and asking questions?

You can’t ask Death questions like
Why? or What are you doing?
I read once that Death is like
a blind man, pointing a bony finger…
something like that.

I pray for your soul.
That it isn’t just out there,
that it has found a resting place,
that you have found a resting place,
where Death can’t interrupt anymore.

Navigational systems only take you so far.
Far enough that you can see the end of the street,
and you can touch the end of the street,
but you can’t go past it.

The annoying voice tells you when to go right,
or left, but then leaves you hanging at the intersection because it has to reset itself.

–

There was a time when I couldn’t feel anything.
When I wouldn’t see the stars come out
and it wouldn’t bother me because the shining
and the winking had no meaning.

A time when each would sit on a shoulder
and whisper light and dark into my ears,
and I had to choose between the two.

It was about that time when my GPS stopped working
and I would stay lost for long periods of time.
My compass had no magnet
pinning it to the earth and it would spin freely.

It was when I could dance ballet,
and pirouette on the big toe of my left foot.
And then, upon falling, I wouldn’t get up.

–

But it was then Laura’s voice would return
to bring me back to the top of the street.

He’s long forgotten his dream, and is staring
at the red lines in the American Flag above his bed.
Not sure what they remind him of, he shuts his eyes
And breathes: in, out, in, his breath catches.

A sparkle of light finds the tear as it rolls
down the plane of his face towards his ear.
He doesn’t wipe it away and it pools
In the space at the crest of helix. It tickles.

So he swings his legs down, and places
His feet on the floor. He reaches for his shoes
Left first, then right. He needs the routine
More then ever now, for what he’s about to do.

Nana’s already awake and he can hear her voice
in the kitchen, her soft steps on the hardwood.
In the hallway wanting to dream again, he closes his eyes
but is thrust back into the darkness when he hears

“Mac, is that you? Come on in here… Breakfast is on the table.”
Hesitating a fraction of a second before the slightly open door,
he stands up straight and opens it wider,
momentarily blinded by the harsh light of the kitchen.

His grandmother walks over to say good morning,
and he lets her, a shadow passing over his face.
He knows he doesn’t deserve her affection.
His mother catches it and looks at him, questioning.

But he can’t tell her, because he has to tell Nana.
“Nana, can I tell you something?”
His shoulders are hunched and he can’t meet her gaze.
He begins to stutter out, “Nana, Nana, I….”

Her softly lilting voice interrupts, and he finally remembers.
“I know Mac, I know, and you’re forgiven.”