Usagi's blog

Old poem. Same feeling.

20:35 & it's raining again,
rain tapping at the roof outside my room
outside the window where I lay
among the lumps & tangles of my bed,
one hand reaching up to almost touch
the screen--

20:37 & it's thundering
idly, grumbling; these great clouds
rolling over each other, shaking drops
off onto our shingles, sheet metal--

20:39 & the peepers
are desperate, screaming--

I'm thinking about heat, about
sweat, about communication
& how the space between us

was so thin, the heat of skin,
electrons repelling electrons;

For gg's rant challenge-- I delivered this standing on a table in the Castleton cafeteria, to the general enjoyment of the lunch crowd and acute annoyance of the cafeteria staff.

You had your chance. The camera got there first
while you languished, stale, caught up
in capturing the glint of rain on roads, walls,
roofs; light filtering grayly through a veil
of cloud. You were grasping for poetry
in this scene so familiar you can sketch it
with your fingertips in the dark-- You have.
Your teacher says repetition is the key
to mastery. At some point you'll realize
she means tuition, and stop paying.
For now you hold her words in your mouth,
tasting possibility. You'd like to sketch
this scene on her body, tracing the angles

woke(?) to campus streetlights
rose & dropped & coughed into my hands
all blurs of blue & black this paint
this light
this liquid night in droplets in my palms
fingers
lungs

held my breath til I could breathe

stood leaning on the windowstill
gulping night humidity & hoping
emerge whole from 3 a.m.

a pair of lungs on legs

a pair of dripping eyes

i am eating strawberries one at a time small and tart and candy-sweet

i am dizzy but thats okay i just stand and breathe

in dust and smoke and particles of carpet-fiber

i am not even waiting

look i am emotionally self-sufficient

in

this state of mind

im not sick i cant be sick

i can still think just not like normal i dont have breaks between thoughts

look no punctuation this glorious spin cycle of words

(you skim)

incontinuous

(milk)

no no no

look

stay home and help me make little

communists

Recognition night-- the gym bleachers all pulled out, the kids lined up in the first three rows and the parents sitting stiffly behind them. Before us, a podium and a table with a stack of certificates and a small pile of goldish pins. We lined up in alphabetical order, sat and conversed blankly. Indifferent.

erase these sounds

chopping potatoes downstairs
a plea for salad, asparagus
defrosting on the counter

hard drive humming, blinking

the windowshade bulges

weight of a sneering sun
through leaves, brilliant
emerald shadows,
veins
rustling

the thin wave of my breath

and that song, always
that song playing in my head.

this morning I turned myself into bubbles
filled my body in with graphite, left
smudges where I sat

chose

A B C D or E
300 times over

watched the clouds retreat
the cars roll by
the sun climb, fall, fade

Slammed at CCYWC's rooftop open mic.

We are all breaking down typing our confessions because we cannot speak, we cannot make a sound–someone to talk to, please. Someone to wrench these words from my body, pull them from my throat, ease this pressure–someone to kill the guilt. Someone to tear down these walls I’ve built. Thebes was conquered early today, dragged through the school the halls on the way to a joke to a pun to a play on normality–on reality–I dip a bow–the starring role!–& turn to walk away–

This discrepancy, disparity, duality of two-worlds-in-one-head of a reality, of a word that by my definition has no definition anymore, has no meaning nor significance to my day-by-day existentialist existence that for a lack of a better word I call my life. I admit sometimes I am inclined to lie back in my chair and stare at the sky and ask, “What does it all mean?” It’s just a thing I do. I don’t expect a solution, resolution, absolute absolution; I’m not that dense. I prefer to quip a snarky “Forty-two” and that’s the best answer I’ve found as of yet: Nonsense.

Clip at the beginning & end by The Mountain Goats.

--not fucked up enough to be statistically significant, just critical enough to envy the magnificent, standing in bookstores and museums imagining my work here, here, here; picturing myself in textbooks, this photo, this page, this moment of my life that made me great—fate—heavensent—

This is the manic day of blood rushing in tides & the human heart turned into an engine demanding calories suctioned up from the stomach full of air & sound, the lungs inflating, deflating like bellows & emitting not the right words, not the wrong, just what you didn’t realize you were saying.

***

Story premise: lost in the woods, you are forced to eat your imaginary friend. How do you season him?

***

sweating out adrenaline
that clots in my wrists & fills them,
aching, with dread--
I squeeze their twitching into stillness.
my pulse sickens me.

***

Ehm. It's too small to read, even when expanded, but so far this is the only size that YWP'll accept. I'll keep messing around with it.

Edit: Nothing bigger will upload, so thumbnails two through four are details-- little cropped pieces that contain words.

To download the file & view it correctly: http://drop.io/5afvnd7

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Yesterday's footprints have melted down from white to green to brown to black, stones slick & exposed, stonewalls in rows & footsteps sloshing there & back through snowmelt thick with birdcalls, flower petals crushed flat & stalks leaning in the mud; I walk/ along yesterday's footprints--

I walk inside the flood.

I cannot devote my life to art.
That's impractical, impossible.

I will redeem my life with art.

I fling the window open wide
to welcome in the night,
release the clutter caught inside.
I fling the window open wide
to free the day into the dark
and all its dusty light;
I fling the window open wide
to welcome in the night!

She’ll capture the ocean in a jam jar, glass,
and I’ll catch the universe in a fishbowl,
let it glow, expand, let it spin
in blues and blacks and sparks of white
shooting off like stars—
they are—burning in your eyes.

I can look forever at stars,
far and cold and blazing white,
shining long before I first opened my eyes.
Perspective. Who’s in a fishbowl
now, huh? Who’s under glass?
When I die, the earth will still spin

and you will forget the color of my eyes.
(Blue, maybe teal, and flecked with white.)
You will forget the galaxies in my head, the stars

Funny, when we fall apart, we let nobody see. We make excuses, walk away, and break down privately, in bathroom stalls and empty rooms that no one else can find; we listen to the logic of the voices in our minds.

I’m useless for what I cannot do. I’m worthless if I don’t do well. I’m stupid if I can’t find truth. I’m weak if I don’t go through hell.

You’re not going through hell if no one can tell.
You’re not going through hell if no one can tell.
You’re not going through hell if no one can tell.
You’re not going through hell if no one can tell.

Bitch.

When I pull up to the curb and turn my engine off my ears buzz in the sudden silence until the wind picks up and rattles the leaves on the sidewalk and somebody’s dog starts yapping three houses down. The rain hasn’t reached this far. The streetlights, my old friends, twist and wave hello and I stumble on the steep concrete steps and wonder if I’m not drunk somehow, intoxicated with freedom, introspection; possibility. Anger. Hello doorbell. Somebody shut that dog the fuck up.

Three o’clock is the testing hour, the deepest night, when even the streetlamps’ light recedes to a dim timid pool of yellow at the edge of intersections, onramps, supermarket parking lots and gas station windows and I have only my headlights and my head to guide me and my head, Lucid, now that you’re gone, is not the most reliable of instruments. The clock on my dashboard says I’ve been wandering for hours but I’ve just been talking to you, dear Lucid, and I haven’t told you nearly all I want to say. Barely a fraction of it. Did you ever really know me, Lucid?

If there is a moon it would be following me and if there are stars behind this blank red screen of clouds they would follow me also, watch me from above and below where they would be reflected in the puddles I splash through, fighting with the streetlights for space. This night is a painting, red on black. This night is a poem written in blood.

Token disclaimer:

Not for those who like their stories neat & clean & sane.

Dearest Lucid,

I killed you.

I cleaned your blood up off the floor. I even felt remorse, seeing you like that—splayed, pale and broken on the pink-stained tile. Real remorse, if you believe me. A thick nauseous guilt that will likely linger for days or even weeks. I might miss you. You were nice enough, in your own blindly logical way; you just didn't ever listen to me. I, who could see more than you ever did. I, who knew what logic could not deduce.

Now that you have drunk yourself into a stupor, I will change the month on your calendar…

The subway floor is shuddering & shifting, & an excited murmur is building like smoke in the air above my head, a thick cloud of French & accented English collecting in the spaces between the screech of the rails & the wail of the accordion two cars down & filling my chest with coils & wisps of je ne comprends pas. The Milkman’s Union playing in one ear; my eyes unfocused with jet lag, exhaustion. The outskirts of Paris flash by.

Lyrics from TVotR's Red Dress.

Through the powers of wizardry (and by reducing the size of the image to LESS than the size of the state of Vermont) gg has been able to upload Usagi's wonderful window to her mind.)The image upload function doesn't work at the moment, so I used my good friend drop.io, who had better bloody not fail on me. It's been 'preparing' the file for a good five minutes now. Preparing for what?

Behold: Arrowchart, or, What Usagi Does With Her Time.

Greenie & I were taking a journalism class this past semester, & the final assignment was to examine the past, present, & future of reporting: how it has changed, how it will change. We interviewed gg & added clips from the YWP First Night performance, to go with the future theme, & Kaki King for general awesomeness.

Lately, I’ve been spending all my time in front of the fire. I sit with my legs crossed & the woodstove at my knees, & stare in through the sooty glass at the slowly disintegrating logs, the puffs of soft gray ash, the playful fingers of flame. My favourites are the invisible ones—detectable only by their shifting blue edges & yellow peaks. The occasional glitter of sparks.

Completely rewritten; a couple bits of paragraphs retained. Same subject.

Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.

History, to me, is a collection of stories. It’s the interwoven tales of millions of individuals who together drive the present forward to be examined by future historians who pore over their books and analyze what went wrong, right, should’ve could’ve might’ve happened —now. Those history texts have not yet been written. The pages are blank. The characters are us, and we hold the pen.

Hey, YWP. I'm applying to a two-year international collegish program called United World College, & part of the app is a 500 word essay. This is my, oh, prolly second or third draft. It's still about forty words over the limit & definitely not my best work. So I ask of you, beg of you: please edit my essay.

Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.

An english assignment: a three-page paper based on a single effect, a la Poe. I tried to steal a bit of his style, minus the obsession with being buried alive. Did I succeed? What single effect is this?

Spinning, spinning, spinning--what a useless & dizzying day!
The glorious peppermint chaos in the halls, clumped into knots
of mouths & hands exchanging candy, chocolates--
CDs & hats & statues, pens, something worryingly pink & lacy--

--christmas carols ringing bells inside our heads--

& class after class contains nothing
but cookies & shiny chocolate santas in a sleigh.

Already the sugar is clouding my head
with fiberglass foam. Aching pink. Already
I'm laughing too loud, too short, too shrill--

--Already I'm running & tripping & sliding