everything is available-ated

being the slow ass that i am, i didn't precisely realize this until like a second ago, but a blog really is a distinct organism, isn't it? like, i do a lot more in here than i could either in published form (faint mollification for the fact that i remain unpublished on paper, but something, right?) or in diary form. i can throw stuff in here that works with my rhizomatic understanding of how my life and thoughts come together to "create" "poetry," such as this thought, for instance, without going all poetic journal in the thirties t.s. eliot with it (again, like i could ever have gotten published in that chicago thing [i don't remember if that's where t.s. eliot published, either, but i know he published somewhere]). because, see, i know that poetic essays usually sound like CRAZY PEOPLE have written a series of words on a page and we're all supposed to take them seriously (see proprieception), either this, which is preferable, or they pretend like they make sense by arguing through something carefully to the point that we all realize that there is no argument, no point, and possibly no god (see something about w.c.w's moveable iamb thing by some woman whose name i don't remember but might be diane). but in a blog, rambling is expected, encouraged, possibly enjoined.

and because i like to ramble while producing sentences that fall within the province of pretty prosaic english language, these odd essay things i put on here, which aren't poetry but are sometimes closely related to poetics (and sometimes are related to poetics just by proximity), wouldn't work at all as a series of kora in hell-style fragmentations (not in the least because i'm no william carlos williams). unlike william carlos williams, i don't pretend that i'm doing anything new; i'm not particularly interested in newness. newness requires direction, an impersonal sense of trajectory--i'm not interested in anything impersonal.

transparency would be one frame to put around that which the blogging format has provided me. i exist in constellation on this blog (william carlos williams would approve!), and no grass grows on the lines between word and word. that's a poetic way of saying that all my inconsistencies are wildly available in this format, and i like that. i want it recorded that there was a day on which i knew myself in love, and another day on which i passed it off as metaphor or worse. nothing is permanent, nothing is un-adjustable; everything is just available. which sounds like a somewhat dirtier movie than the one that frodo starred in, but i didn't see everything is illuminated, nor read the book (hey, good as it looked, it was published after 1950), so i don't know.

i like growing up. it scares me, but i like it. for instance, black sabbath is a descendant of led zepplin. i could have read that on the internet, but i prefer to find it out myself. and ann peebles is amazing.

my love, yet not my love

tarot card visual

i'm not like anything
you know.

for one,
i gather the fabric
of what you do to me
in two hands

and like a
lovesick bird
the air,
i wring from it
a flight,
my beating heart

like a velvet wing,
launching toward
the taut sun, the sun
of your face.
i wrap my wrists

in the fabric
of this feeling,
twisting,

midair.


-----
i give up. it's over. i'm not sure what i've been holding, but i give it away. i surrender it. i give it over. I WANT YOU. i cut my lips on wanting. my eyes are wet with desire. i'm cracked, dead without you. come to me--come back to me. don't punish me with your distance, the fact that you don't know any of this--i call to you--you must know, you must understand, it's been years, and i've tried to tell myself that it isn't real, that you don't mean anything beyond a symbol. but you grow in my heart, white rose. my heart which is nothing more than a black lake and a black sky--i don't know what you're doing there--i don't know how you survive there, and i don't know how to make you mine...

i dream of touching your lips with mine and it's like the world shimmers and then shatters completely. how can a surrounding world be black and white and yet filled with gold and silver? i long for you. it's that simple. it's that terrifying, and completely irrational, but--

in a way it's ridiculous that i write poetry at all. i'm in many senses a very rational person. i don't believe in succumbing to what i can avoid succumbing to. there are other reasons for it to be ridiculous, such as an intense lack of personal experience, but a lot of it has to do with that, that i just have no problem with forcing myself to the point of zero before i'll allow myself to experience ANYTHING. and even then, i just want to get it done. i'll admit to this love. i'll ask for her to come to me. i'll acknowledge that my need for her is stronger than the fear that i'll hurt her irrevocably. but only because it seems the only logical solution to the issue of what i feel, how i long, how it burns to want her.

stupid capricorn passions. practically impossible to ignite; even more impossible to MAKE GO AWAY. i guess i don't know what i'd spend my time doing if not this.

...not tori. not sure that qualifies as a joke.

spelling

like a woman cocooned
i will wait here,
silk-twined,
for meaning to touch
my face
like naked sunlight.

if my bound shape
liquefies, pressed,
repressed,
into predetermined newness--
the fugal t,
the ever-loving u--
i will probably twist
and squirm

but in the end look back
and say, i did that
for this,
and this will be a thing
i will have wanted
to have done that for.

because that
is the thing
about cocoons:
they press one down
into
a series of
single shapes--
the fugal t,
the ever-loving u.

pontificatin'

it's always good to be reminded in an at least quasi-gentle manner of one's faults. for example, i am a hypocrite. i'm allowing the fact that someone else got something out of an audition i didn't get anything out of to get me down, and that's just ridiculous. i always tell other people (read: "pontificate on about the idea") that singing isn't really a competitive sport, and yet here i am getting all blah blah over something i really am happy about: i really really want my friends to succeed. hell, i want my enemies to succeed. their success makes trumping them eventually all the sweeter. that was mostly a joke. but i really really really want my friends to succeed. and their success has nothing to do with my failure. this is not new territory.

i've been getting away from the essentials recently, so it's just as well to be brought back to them: i'm not good enough. i'm not good enough, and that's okay. it's time for me to stop being over-rewarded for potential. it's good, you know, to know that i'm not good enough, because it fans the flame. i don't want to protest too loudly against selling out and losing my soul, because if i do do so eventually (or if i am in the process of doing so as i write), it'll be downright embarrassing to have some written record of my medium-youthful idealism staring me in the face-ooty. BUT it's not like i want to do that thing where you become some sort of barbie doll opera singer. HOWEVER, there is no need to continue at my current level of unprofessionalism. except for fear. and fear deserves to be looked in the face.

now, let's not assume a causal relationship here. the theoretical changes i am proposing have to do with a., a renewed attack on the weaknesses of my voice, and b., projecting self-confidence. but i don't think i necessarily would have gotten what i'd auditioned for if i had had both projected self-confidence and lessened vocal flaws at the audition. there's no need to assume that i did something wrong at the audition. i just wasn't good enough, or not right for the part. either way is acceptable.


i'm mid-struggle. i'm usually mid-struggle. i haven't tried taking a step back in a while. i've been ensconced so thoroughly in the middle of chaos that i haven't been looking at the larger picture--or maybe the larger picture can't become clear until 90% of its details are worked out in chaos. and with me, i never know whether i'm actually seeing a big picture, or just some exciting but delusional dream-picture. so i don't know if what i'm proposing is going to work.

i had a thought earlier: it's that i should leave the meting out of justice on myself to a higher power than myself. i mean, i don't know--i'm not sure about this. not that i honestly believe i can stop anything from happening to me if i make sure i pay for whatever i consider myself guilty in. it's the idea that nothing that can be done to me is worse than what i can do to myself. call me crazy ("willingly," may be the response to that) but it provides a certain measure of comfort to know that i've been plunging myself into the deep all these years, as hermia does not say.

and it provides a certain amount of comfort to attempt to break certain habits of thought because i want to sing better. it's not for myself; it's for my voice. talk about your disingenuous projects.

the point is that i don't have to feel bad about not getting that part. i wasn't good enough, or they didn't want me. either way is fine. and this leaves me free to be really really excited for my friend, as he deserves.