It seems that when I have a million things to do and very little time to do them, all I can get myself to accomplish is roasting garlic and doing an unnecessary load of laundry.

This Side of the Mountains

My fingers touch glass and are a paled reflection of rain,

slender trails of what has fallen first,

and you're there too, in the muddled colors,

and then I know it's my cheek that's glass.

Dry mouths are asking wet questions

but the wind blows their syllables crooked,

rips the vowels out--

E's and A's are bleeding bad intentions and

you are always looking away.

On this side of the mountains it's a storm

(one you've said you can't withstand)

and so occasionally I have stood with others.

Under their elbow it's never the same,

and I come out feeling numb,

and smelling like an unfamiliar armpit.

I should not say,

I love you for your armpit

but how else do you categorize

one million unmatched puzzle pieces

that are telling me the same story?

We duck the billowed clouds,

two silhouettes made damp by their own breath,

and try to remember how hands fit together,

clapping like oncoming thunder.

Tiny Moon

" All that has touched me is carried inside a swarm of bees.

One day that swarm of bees will carry me to heaven.

This is why the compass and our bodies

both swing north. "

-Anis Mojgani

Anis Mogjani - Shake The Dust

Just because I love him and have been feeling this poem so much lately.

I'm wishing I was in Germany today. What I wouldn't give to eat a nice pot roast from the Agustiner.

Dorian Gray for days and days!

I have so much reading this quarter that even when I get an entire day to myself, and attempt to spend the whole entire thing doing homework, I barely even finish one assignment. Today I’ve been reading A Picture of Dorian Gray which is tedious and full of double meanings, though enjoyable. I am so tired of literature after only three weeks of classes that I can’t quite ever imagine reading a book in its entirety ever again after this. Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent so much time in the realm of poetry, where every little tiny word counts, and now when I try to read a novel it seems important to scrutinize every single syllable, and that just takes FOREVER.

Day in and day out I am reminded that there are many reasons that I am not a literature major, the first and foremost being that reading seems to cause some kind of magical narcolepsy within me where I fall asleep as soon as I encounter the fifth sentence of anything. Determined to buck that trend, I’ve had somewhere between 3 and 5 cups of coffee today, and my hands are shaking while I type this. I managed to pay all my bills for the month, mail a package, print my reading assignments for the next week, read eleven chapters and even make a real dinner (Oh, the miracles of caffeine!) but somehow I don’t feel very productive.

The last four months of college have had me feeling as if I’m treading water, and the current is rough and choppy. I’ve been working so hard, at school and at work and in the in-between moments, but I am restless and more than ready to move on with my life. I’m interested in what I’m doing here and I try hard to live in the present but I can’t help but to find myself lost in thoughts of breakfasts in Paris and climbing to the top of church rotundas patinated with age. I catch the 90A to campus and I wish it was the overcrowded, peculiar-smelling bus in Budapest instead. I guess for now all I can do is stick my nose back into the pages of my book and save pocket change. If only international flights didn’t cost an arm and a leg and I could make car payments disappear with the snap of my fingers!

Flying South

The truth is...I've been thinking a lot about migrating to another blog hosting site. It's not that I don't really like blogger, I do (in fact, it seems to be by far the easiest site to navigate) but there are small, persistent things that bug me. I've started to think about them all the time, like some kind of stupid, internet-themed, reoccurring dream. I can't center my title picture. When you copy and paste text it comes out weirdly spaced, Every. Dang. Time. The new picture uploader is strange and hard to work with. So maybe it's time for a change?

Who can say.

All I know is, is that there's still snow all over the place up here and BRR it is cold! And we got no snow days! So unfair, but I guess that's just life. Last night I tried to uncover my poor little car from its blanket of snow, but I'm still not sure I can drive anywhere. Usually, I hate the snow and the way it makes it impossible to go out anywhere. But Bellingham has a nice always-running bus system and I can walk to pretty much anything from my house this year so I've actually been really glad that it has stuck around as long as it has. It makes it nice to be home in my cozy kitchen, where, I might add, our fluorescent overhead lights have gone out forcing us to carry lamps around with us while we cook (uhm, do you know how much those light bulbs cost to replace?! Outrageous!).

November Baby

M in Three Parts

1.

girl; woman with strong hands,

with hair that evolves

and queen-like eyes

brown and green at the same time

like summer trees.

2.

curvaceous, voluptuous;

wonderously childlike and wise

beyond the number of candles

she will ever blow over.

3.

to go, to let go,

to be a freed person

whose ideas are a warm wind.

To love without alternative,

to experience deeply,

to be at home

at the place that you're in.

Writers Block

FUCK THIS POEM

Last night's cigarette burns my nose

stench trapped in twice washed skin

and I am worrying what you might think.

Drawn with unruly lines

your outline and your sharp remarks

blur with the kindest shade of beige.

I feel contrived.

I can't even write anything about you.

Fuck this poem,

it sucks.

If there's one thing that I know right now, it's that I'm going to be really tired tomorrow and regret having stayed up this late.

But I don't think I could sleep at the moment anyway.

I've been falling asleep with my face smashed between the pages of On the Road today, and also The Catcher in the Rye, though I must admit I've been slacking on my reading of the latter one since I've read it before. I'm preoccupied with thoughts of the '60s and particularly how that generation correlates to the many wild and fantastical stories my dad has told me over the last 21 years. Maybe I haven't made it to the wild parts of the story yet, but Jack Kerouac kind of seems like he was just a regular guy. Or maybe that's just because I spent so much time watching that Weather Underground documentary and fantasizing about the '60s being all about wild sexual freedom and trying to overthrow our government. Whatever the case may be, it's still hard for me to fathom the fact that many of the people who were so crucial and influential to the Beat Generation were younger then than I am now.

I don't know what this quarter will bring, but I know that I already have a hell of a lot of homework, so cross your fingers for me that my reading pace will somehow miraculously improve. Hopefully I'll find some time to write some poems, too!