I feel like we've all written this poem at some time, in some way

"Bluebird" - Charles Bukowski

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?



I was just introduced to this a few nights ago, and it honestly grabbed me in a way I can't even begin to explain. How many nights have I, have you, have we all lain awake with the bluebird? and what is the significance of bluebird? The beautiful song that we can't/won't let out? Take blue as in the mood, as in we have a struggle inside we can't break free from? I know its not a poem that requires much textual analysis (I'll probably get yelled at for saying that). Each section lands beautifully. If you know even a little bit about Bukowski (as I know very little as of right now...searching for an adequate biography to read over break...) you'll find, even in his other poems, that at times he is quite hard, crude, offensive, and sometimes uses imagery that us downright repulsive. He was also an incredibly hard looking man. But out of all of that rises bluebird, one of the most heartbreaking and tender and beautiful pieces I have ever come across. I held back the urge to cry when this was first read aloud to me. And to me, this is one of the many reasons I adore poetry so much. It's like that buried treasure, that deep and blinding beauty within every single human being, but a beauty that often goes largely unnoticed because either we don't reach down far enough in ourselves to find it, or other people don't bother to look for it in us either. We use understood symbols (letters, words) not to convey or explain, but to evoke. Have you ever seen the juxtaposition of two, three, four words, such a small set of words, that have stirred in you something that no other words could even begin to explain? Language is such a gift, such a mystical thing when I think about how we use it as art to evoke in others the deepest feelings of our humanity. Things that can only be felt, never explained. Sometimes I think, there is so much beauty in the world that is hidden, but that is because true beauty is something so precious that it will never be appreciated unless it is genuinely sought(if you want to ride with me for a second with the whole Platonic idea of true beauty, etc). Don't keep your bluebird inside. Always look for other people's bluebirds.


-J

After A While

after a while you either
learn
or
you do not
the difference between
pity and empathy
hard and strong
love and
temporary madness
after awhile,
you learn

to hear the truth when he
mumbles or pants, 'baby, its you'
he wants all of you
after awhile
you learn what to do

after a while you stop wasting your time
and you stop taking shit
and you're doing just fine

and after a while
for all that you learn
you are back where you started
minus the burn


-J

Mona Lisa Had Other Plans

given the choice of
beauty
or plain
i pick the latter
for what are the beautiful
things anyway
but muses for monuments
paintings, ageless tales,
stuff of legends,
bearers of scales

because that statue hasn't
a beating heart
and can you believe some man actually sat
trying to capture her
in cold stone with dead eyes,
a mockery
robbing her of what she was,
constructing his own instead

and some may say oh how wonderful
to be bound in the annuals of His story
forever like a goddess revered and yes
i would agree, would be an honor
if it were really she

and he even was so gracious to assign
her an ideal
and make her beauty in her blindness
part of her appeal

and so for my choice i inspired not
no followings created
but i was known for what i was
and therefore, celebrated.

-J

I'm not going to wax philosophical. Or wax poetical. Or wax sentimental...

Or wax anything really. I mean, its the winter time and I'm not currently dating, so there's no need.... ;-D

I try to reserve my blog as an unwinding tool and a way to get thoughts out. I don't flesh out any of my writing here, its mainly sketches of thoughts and ideas. Why choose to do it in blog form, when I've done it my whole life in a journal? Well, figured I'd try something new. Eventually I might join an online community of other writers to discuss ideas and such to get feedback, but right now I'm content with my pseudo-anonymity. Blogs are apparently trendy (I missed the whole livejournal/blurty era of online self-disclosure) but none of my friends read this one because frankly, its not about my life (much), therefore, not juicy. ha! I like it.

But like I said, I'm gonna indulge for a moment my excitement over the upcoming break. I'm so excited about so many things, especially the following:

-Seeing the baby (ok, US Marine, but still) Broski
-Seeing my jr. high best friend, who I havent seen in three years!
-Reading mah novelssss
-BAKING COOKIES
-Re-watching LOST season 5 to prepare for Feb. 2nd....
-Working, having a little bit of $$
-SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. Seriously. There are two things I don't get enough of in life, and both of them involve a bed. At least I can catch up on one of those this break ;)
-RAGTIME in NYC with momma and my aunt bobbie. My favorite musical and I've never had the chance to see it live until NOW! (It just got revived in November). I'm going to bawl like the lily-livered sap I really am.


Yeah....life is good. Final presentation at 8am tomorrow (not ok) and then....FIN! END SCENE! So thankful.


Ok, I'll wax philosophical a little bit. Er, meaning I will just reprint someone else waxing philosophical In the honor of the end of the semester, a little gem from Neil Gaiman (Admittedly the only novel I've ever read of his was Stardust and I was introduced to the Sandman series by a former flame, but I havent exactly gotten through all 75 issues, ha) but this quote, which I love, is from one of the earlier ones. I tried to remember it, but ended up having to google to find the whole thing. ANYWAY.

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”

Neil Gaiman

Veritas.

-J

File under 'So Good it Should Be Illegal'

No, I'm not talking about my makeout skills.


Robert. Francis. He's only 21. But damn that kid has something. Please enjoy 'little girl'...the whole suicide references tend to shade it with an emo tint, but if you wait until the end of the song where he makes the Romeo and Juliet reference, he knocks it out of the park and it definitely shines above the 'i need you so much but i'mma gonna go slit my wrists now' template. His voice reminds me of Shawn Mullins (anyone remember him? the Lullabye guy? OK!) So good. Also check out 'Darkness' if you find yourself into his sound.



-J

The ladymonster eats washington!!

i bit that washington, firm, and it was good
and i was naked the way i liked it
no one told me to, that reptile was added
in the editing process
he's what you call a motif

so i was nude and it was good
then scratchy leaves
and skins
and rough fibers
and shrouds
and kimono
then frock then skirt then mini skirt
i never did know why they spent as much time
trying to cover it up
as they did trying to get it off

all i know is as i was enjoying the wind
between my thighs and against my breasts,
sunning my empty back
he and He came to say no
they took one look at the core
and realized what they'd done
before I did. Trying to make sure I never will.



-J

I am the captain of my soul

INVICTUS - William Ernest Henry

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.





4 months.

-J

Well, my blog is afterall, my life according to everyone else

"But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their heart's desire, their dream... But the price of getting what you want, is getting what you what you once wanted."
— Neil Gaiman

Short and random thought that is no where near new or profound, but increasingly relevant to my little life at the moment: If you're gonna get what you want, you have to give up the desire to have it. And I think a lot of the time that burning, unfulfilled drive and desire can burn more brightly than the joy of actually getting what we want. And most times, the things we want, we don't actually we to have, or possess...we just want to know we can have them.

I'm toying with an idea for a story right now based on a clip I saw on CNN a couple years ago, about a supposed affliction termed 'love addiction.' It's not sex-addiction. Apparently, one can be literally 'addicted' to relationships. I used to just look at people like that and call it neediness and insecurity, but now its official: love really is a disease. I've watched my friends endlessly torture themselves over their own unrequited lovers, suffer from lack of favor from the apple of their eye, and endlessly question their worthiness and value. Morphing into another person's ideal prototype. I would think, what a pity. Spineless, you'll throw away every bit of your original self to mold to someone else's expectations or wishes. I guess I've known quite a few people you could call 'love addicts.' And then a thought dawned on me. What if it's quite possible that these people actually know themselves better than anyone else? Are truer and realer than the 'i am woman hear me roar/she don't wanna man/destiny'schildindepedentwomen ladies walking around who do yoga and backpack across Europe and have Vegas girl's-night one-night-stands to try to 'find themselves' and 'be who they really are' outside the context of a man? (PS I'm not purposefully excluding male/gay/lesbian/trans 'love addicts' - I'm just writing from my own perspective - a 'stereotypical' straight female's). Maybe the 'love addict' - the pathetic, no-spine, will-bending relationship shape-shifter, eternal people pleaser - maybe this person has more of it figured out than the rest of us. Because who are we, once it's all stripped away. Who do we become when all the things that we've decided we are, are taken away from us? What happens if all of the labels we give ourselves and all our definitions of self, all the of meaning we have constructed, down to our very own thoughts, are obliterated? And we instead we substitute someone else's reality? Someone else's ideals? Are we then supremely weak and insignificant because we have no sense of constructed identity left...or are we supremely intelligent, because now we can experience alternate reality without the prejudice of our own getting in the way?

I'm not sure that made any sense. But I think it'd be a cool idea to explore. I have to admit I have become a little bit obsessed with deconstructionism lately. I even attempted to start reading Of Grammatology but got confused as fuck and have put a pause on it until break. But I think most of the main points concerned deconstruction of language, whereas I am more fascinated by the deconstruction of thoughts/ideas/existing paradigms etc.

Blah. I need to do my actual schoolwork. Procrastination is the name of the game. Couple that with not enough time to do anything, and we've got one hell of an end of a semester....wish me luck.

-J

The Sappiest Thought I Have Had In Months

Screw the snow. Why? Not because it sucks in general, making driving conditions awful, making everything cold, wet, and miserable, and not because it sometimes sticks around forever. No, not those reasons.

Fuck you, first beautiful snowfall for instilling these rouge girlish thoughts and desires into my brain. It's cold, there's a pretty white blanket covering the ground, all signifying that people should stay the hell inside. And all I can think of, most of the day, is how incredibly nice it would be to lie on the couch, or in bed, entangled with another, just generating some body heat and listening to the snow fall. Drinking some stupid tea or hot chocolate and watching some dumb movie, although the movie isn't the point, it's just the excuse to be close. Much like the cold. And the snow. I start to crave it, like the want of a strong drink after a difficult day, or the need for coffee before class, it strikes you and for the next few minutes or hour so of your life, you are fixated on getting your fix. But I can't swing by the neighborhood bar or starbucks for this. I mean, I've tried to find it at both those places, but without much success. I guess I can only deal with one vice at a time.

Sometimes I feel like I'd trade all the moments of crazy for just one taste of that kind of tranquility. But I'm still young and foolish enough to believe I don't have to make trade-offs, so I don't. And the snow still falls outside, and I still slide under my sheets with just me and my dreams.


-J

amoraporia

i want to feel your nothing on in around about my nothing,
but that would be a contradiction not rational
therefore irrational
like dreams
where anything is possible so i want to
feel your nothing on my nothing and no thing
will impede the feel if we are in a dream
where anything is possible from which we shall eventually wake
to touch, because it is concrete
to feel, only in sleep.

-J

One need not be a chamber to be haunted;

One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
~Emily Dickinson, "Time and Eternity"



The brain is strange. I know that everyday I'm forgetting more and more, growing farther from the memories I made ten, five, two years ago. I remember graduating, but no details about the day. I remember the first time I said 'I love you', but I don't remember anything about what prompted it, just where I was and who I was with. I remember turning 21 (surprisingly) but not who all was there, or where we went. I remember lots of things, as in remembering they happened. You tend to lose the details.

Why is it then that the brain decides to remember every single little detail of the days of tragedy?

I was in Bed, Bath, and Beyond the other day. All of sudden I was frozen with the strangest panic and anxiety. I immediately went back to August 8th 2009. I was on a marketing assignment with Melissa for Kildares, and we stopped in Bed, Bath and Beyond so that I could buy a wine opener, since I had lost mine during the move to my new apartment. I hadn't been in a BBB since that day. I still can't wear anything I wore that day. I remember everything about that day. It had been one of those wonderfully average, warm and laid back summer days. I worked all day with Melissa, had dinner with her at Subway, and then we had one of our chill wine nights. I remember us discovering the creepiness and awesomeness of Toddlers and Tiaras and how much we laughed during the marathon of episodes TLC was running. I remember catching up on the True Blood that I had missed with Patrick later that night. Walking home because I refused to make Patch move his car to take me home, because I am stubborn. I remember walking down Bernard, contemplating a Taquito, and then ultimately deciding I didn't want to feel like crap in the morning. Remember not having any food in the house. Remember losing on of my contacts in the sink when I took them out. Watching a history channel special about prostitution in ancient Pompeii. Turning off the TV. Hearing the noise. And then seeing and feeling and screaming things I will NEVER forget.

It sounds twisted and maybe dramatic, but I will never forget how his hands felt on me. How my stomach churned up through my esophagus and my hands tried to pull and grab and push and stayed painfully immobile. How it was like watching myself scream, like hearing myself but not really believing I was the one making the sound. How even in those brief moments I was at once denying it was happening and also knowing very well what he could do to me. Looking at the window and screaming louder. Wondering how I could run outside even if I got free, being that I was only in my underwear. Feeling like I was going to die.

And after, breaking free, watching him run out of the room, the realization that my heart was beating so fast and hard that I thought for sure it was going to beat right through my chest. Like it was going to explode. My head pounded so hard that I was sure I would pass out and that my brain was going to fall out of my skull. He was gone but I continued to scream still hoping that someone would hear. I looked for my phone and could barely hold it. Calling 911 and realizing I had no idea how to describe what just happened to me.

As the months pass I get farther from it. Less and less I have to talk about it, unless its to the lawyer or the detective or someone on the case. Somedays it really does just seem like a bad dream that I can't shake, like something I remember very well but never really happened. Other days, like the day in BBB, and I get transported right back to that exact point in time, and I feel it all, all over again. I had never until that point, and not since, ever felt pure, true terror. And its weird. Because I don't really want people to know. Because I'm not some freak and I'm not going to break and no one has to tiptoe around. I'm ok, and I'm lucky to be here, and to not have been hurt. There's not a lot more I could ask for. If it had to happen, it had the best possible outcome. The only thing I want is to able to feel safe again. To be able to sleep and not run through all the possibilities in my mind every night. To not double check the deadbolt on my bedroom door 10 times a night, or check the window locks every night, or freak out that the fire escape is next to my window, or obsessively make sure the window alarms are working. I want to be able to go downstairs at night and get a goddamn glass of water if I want to. I guess when it comes down to it, I just wanna feel normal again. Because there is a sense of myself that is gone that used to be there, and I miss it severely. It'll be four months next week. Everyday it gets better. Everyday it will get better. I'll always be cautious, I know. I just don't want to always be afraid.

-J

Songs From The Roof

The return of the Cool Night,
come, to sit and talk a while
hold my gaze with Your gleaming eyes
like crystals, gathered, strewn in the skies.

You brush Your wind
To lace my hair
like the touch of a lover's
sweet breath: Your air.

year to year I still succumb-
I revel in the moments, few
when Cool Night, fickle in his favor
quickly bids adieu.

to let it's ripe-breath pass, unheeded
to waste into bitter ice
though Your sweetness be unfaithful, Night-
I make the sacrifice.

For like the love that passes on
And drifts away; cold, obscure-
Cool Night, you leave your memory
For I,
I need not more.

-J

Vicissitudes

The dark November
stark
raving mad cold,
tonight the trees feel old
bend and weep in an icy sweep

It is this night, I know
I do not love you-
but oh, how I once loved you
in the blanketed arms sheltering
late autumn's sting
and the wind would sing,
not morn.

I do not love you,
but how I once loved you
in my season,
smiled on you
like the golden shards
that green the trees
and fuel the summer's balmy breeze

Now the green has gone
and golds and reds and yellows fade
to grey, then bare
like the day that follows tomorrow,
I go from loving you
to not loving you,
to naked branches, starving, cold.
Tonight, I will feel very old
Remembering how once, I loved you
And you loved me, too.

The sun lowering out of the sky
stealing the last warm breath from day,
to know the loss of the sun's favor, into night
and that once, I loved you-
to know that I have lost you.

-J

Abe Lincoln Will Call You Out For Talking Shit on Other People

I was doing some reading on Lincoln for a class. We're studying a play in which Lincoln is indirectly a central character. It's a very difficult play to grasp (The America Play, Suzan Lori Parks) and I've been searching for the past few weeks for a way to get a good grasp on it. I was reading some of Lincoln's writings when I came across a passage in one of his letters to an Allen M. Ford, during his run for the Illinois congress, concerning rumors being spread that he was a religious scoffer, among other things. This is what Lincoln said:


"But there is one lesson in morals which he might, not without profit, learn of even me -- and that is never to add the weight of his character to a charge against his fellow man, without knowing it to be true. I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him." -Abraham Lincoln


I think those people who get so extremely caught up in gossip, rumors, drama, etc...should check out some Lincoln. If I judged everyone on what I heard about them, I probably wouldn't have any of the incredible friends that I have. I live and work within circles that are prone to this, and people wonder how I'm still sane. It's both simple and complicated: You can control yourself, you can't control other people. People will, for whatever reason they wish, try as they may to destroy you, bring you down, slander you, taint your character, and put you into a box. You only let them if you give credence to their insecurity by stooping to their levels or letting them dictate your actions. The best thing I can ever do is live my life as I always have, openly, in plain sight, and be proud, no matter what falsehoods are wrongly attributed to me.

And so it goes, my admiration for Lincoln's elegant calling out of the shit-talkers of ages past. I wish politicians these days could be so eloquent.

-J

The Landing

(Written 7/2/07 - for M.P)
Sunlight dying
across the Delaware
breeze brushing bare shoulders
as creeping dark climbs
clinging to the trees
greeting tiny boats not far from shore
I dangle my small feet,
river air prickles the skin.

I should like that only the sound
of sighs whisper in this music-night
I am chilled
and calm
and I know nothing,
but your eyes are three colors.

The tiny toy boats float
you smile to ask, may we come aboard?
and laughing lightly
at the absurdity of the thought
not of sailing a stranger's fleet
but how my guarded heart now dangles
like my tiny frozen feet.

-J

Oxytocin Blues

(or a silly little song written to make a lot of funny sounds)

beat beat beat beat
drop sink boom
curled up in my room

can't even show my face
or paint my toes
cause everybody knows
cause everybody knows

tornado in my torso
hurricane in my head
you're a natural disaster, baby
leaving me for dead

there goes the neighborhood
along with my heart
there goes your big big big
blue eyes
throw me back to start

thudding in my sinoatrial node
my ventricular cells are about to explode
help me help me doctor boy
before I go to code

beat beat beat beat
drop bam boom
beat beat beat beat faster now
its gonna kill me soon
beat beat beat beat
baby don't you know
there's just no other way I'd rather go, oh oh oh

-J

Nothing Like The Sun

short bold steps with her heels out of place
too high for a pint and a made-up face
with a teeny tiny dress of lace,
barely conceals the secret place

outside she smokes her first last pack
had it once and now she can't go back
and he's making her make up for the things that he lacks
shes on top of hundreds of faceless souls on their backs

the songs are moving her hips like a spell
and she smiles like the stranger you know all too well
you're hoping she'll give you her best 'what the hell'
like Pavlov, you can already imagine her smell

His secretary notes every date and time
every 2pm from his lap she climbs
and she straightens her skirts zipped up from behind
heads home with her song 'he really won't mind'
as long as there is nothing left out to find

and her cheap necklace breaks and her black lace tears
she is the hodge-podged collage framed art of affairs
selling her heart as one of her wares,
she sits reading Tolstoy on the stairs

short bold steps with her heels out of place
steps on a cigarette and the whole human race
out now brief candle, and don't leave a trace

-J.C