Coming to terms with another birthday

21 January 2012

My presence is leaning awkwardly through the doorway,
One hand reaching back, clinging to the doorframe
that is yesterday and childhood.
The other hand holds the doorknob- flung open:
This is coming of age.

My presence leans awkwardly through the doorway.
One had reaches back, clinging to the doorframe.
The other hand holds the door--
knob unlocked- flung open wide:
This is coming of age.

I am present, leaning awkwardly through the doorway.
One hand reached back to catch the light.
The other hand has flung open the door,
Wide.

This is coming of age.

Biography

22 February 2010

Mama

and daddy

taught me reading,

and also my writing

when I was still little--

too little to be much good.

They didn't mind, but it took me

a couple of years to really like writing.

But reading I loved and adored and poured over

every book with beautiful pictures or (more particularly) beautiful poetry

which filled me up with such sing-song joy, it spilled over

and out my own pencil, between the blue lines of three-hole-punched paper.

And I discovered a new love for the scratch of my own thoughts

on the rough of cheap paper, the taste of my pencil between my teeth

as I carefully sampled the sounds to discover a one that could Mean more perfectly.

Luscious-- that is what language became. I pruned and weeded and watered and fertilized with metaphors.

Sometimes I mourned to waste such care on describing the transfer of valence electrons in ionic bonds,

but afterward, in the evenings, I filled up notebooks with my thoughts on love and happiness, sunshine and

warm rain. And sometimes, sometimes, I set down my clicky-pen, closed my moleskine and just loved my own life.

But what, I always ask then, is the good of basking in real life, if you never capture it with

pen and paper? And then I pick up my old, worn composition book and find some place cozy from which to

paint the view in the window of my words.

I love

14 October 2009

Courtney was sitting on that ugly, worn couch in the living room, and I stood in the kitchen doorway. I'm not sure why, but she called out this first line, and I, like some beatnik lounging in a smokey club, picked up the cadence and added my own stanza. Call and return, we yelled to the ceiling, to the clouds, to the world.

It was therapy, and poetry, and lovely.

I love
by Courtney Bullard
and Me

Rain on me every day
and I will still love you.

Open your gloomy clouds
and let down your sorry sodden paint
and I will still love you.

Downpour on me and I will stand beneath
with arms open wide,
and I will call out:

Pour down on me!

Rain, rain, rain!
and I will still love you.

100

01 October 2009

Read me, a treasure map. See me, my language which draws in the style of Monet: impressions of my mind in brush strokes of type. Count me, my words which add to multiply: the some-thing of all is the greater part. From your crow's nest look over, in and under--standing, look out through your telescope of reading glasses. Measure and triangulate the latitude of my thoughts; take a sounding of my paragraphs for the sandy bottom. Find me, what's buried at the center: X marks the spot. Read me, lost thoughts sketched on velum, floating in an old bottle.

October remains

23 October 2008

The sunshine that was savored by the summer-lush leaves has seeped through every vein and now is shining and falling from crisp branches. Like sunbeams on the wrong side of autumn-grey quilted clouds.

The grass crunched this morning with the gasp of first frost. These mornings, the air is heady with fresh celebration of cold; sparking and sharp. I wore a red sweater because joy like new winter is too glorious for my usual drab.

The vestiges of summer are being buried slowly beneath the walnut trees, and the close mountains are frosted in orange. Once the shadows have swallowed dim twilight, winter tickles the darkness with chill breeze.

I think hot chocolate is in order.

5:57

12 August 2008

The loneliest part of living
alone
is not the clock, which chimes
unheard
all day,
or the radio, left on,
forgotten,
entertaining the kitchen wall,
or the feeble light of the telephone
blinking
because no one answered,
or even the dripping faucet which,
unnoticed,
bothers no one’s conscience,

but the back door,
which is locked,
and shuffling for my keys,
I have time to consider
that the dishes are still undone,
that I’ll have to go shopping soon,
that dinner conversation will be the comics again,
that my footsteps will fill the whole void
because there is no one here to play the piano.

Perhaps

29 June 2008

silence is the most beautiful language:

which spoken with the ear comprehends
the tongues of discontent, of frustration
to which voice gives understanding
that turns to thought
to plan
to hope

which comprehends and counsels
in a dialect of love

Perhaps that language
sounds most sweetly
of Above.

Wonder

19 June 2008

I hope
I am never too old
to kneel
on the sidewalk,
face pressed against
the warm ground,
to watch a snail breathe.

An explanation: why I dream of airports

30 April 2008

They are only the entr'acte
to a gust of
fresh wind with a new taste
and wide views of
something the landscape artists
just refaced.

Step inside and leave behind
the old,
paint-peeling,
lifeless
set. It folds into my window view
that clouds obscure.

Closed For Renovations.

Wait for it
unfolding, newmade:
the cloud-curtain rises on
fresh paint and adventure.

Complementary bag of peanuts?
—maybe Jack's Magic Beans.

The trouble with eating in class

26 March 2008

Billy Collins is a lean and tender
T-bone steak, best served rare
with a side salad and something light;
perhaps a sweet Cabernet Franc.

It should not be served with inordinate
amounts of BestWest Steak Sauce,
as if a bottle of that
could sharpen the wit of him.

Principles of Biology has left
a dry aftertaste, and I sit down
salivating for a succulent cut
of the real meat.

Unfortunately, my teacher cooks
experimentally,
and with Sunflower hot-mitts she serves
to us Lecture 29:

Poetry Meatloaf. Which is not
fresh or moist or seasoned right.
But I am hungry. And she doesn’t seem
to have anything else on hand.

Shakespeare in bite-size bits and
Collins ground in with Nash
and something green that doesn’t
seem to belong to anyone

all garnished with slivered Poe
and a slimy ketchup marinara.
It slices neatly and leaves no crumbs
and everyone tucks in quietly.

Except my vegan study partner
who sips her Algebra noisily.
I choke a bit and try
To swallow gallantly.

Meatloaf is barbaric.