Monday, June 30, 2008

facing my own anger

I have always had a fear of anger.
And this weekend I faced mine in an ugly way.
I never understood anyone who resorted to physical violence.
Now I do.
I am not proud of myself. I am somewhat afraid, but I want to learn what it means.
Why would I allow someone to make me feel that way? Use my energy on somebody who is not even in their right state of mind (or body)...?

The weakness of words

I sit in silence
in between shelves of books
hands shaking
at the keyboard

tuna salad coming up my throat
I taste the bitter,

see all the people
who have hurt me
in that one face, in that
dark hair, skinny body
angry eyes, coked out, drunk
telling me I needed to go to
Weight Watchers

like my younger brother
who used to call me fat,
and the jerks in high school
who made fun of everyone

and the Jr High girlfriends who
decided they didn't like me
anymore

my first fuck (I thought I loved him)
who ran away right after
yelling "I don't love you"
never speaking to me again

lace and lemon
stains on my clothes
delicate,
scrubbing hard with too much soap

that fear
in my stomach
mixed with pride...
a strange recipe

and the books stare back,
and I think
I am a poet, but words
sometimes
just don't work

Friday, June 27, 2008

I punched a guy.

No really. I did. And I am most definitely ashamed that I gave someone that much of my energy.

He stepped on my dog,
put beer in her bowl,
told me I needed to go to
Weight Watchers

I punched him in the jaw,
grabbed his balls
and squeezed as hard as I
could.

Wow. New experience.

after Bukowski

We all tell stories of bluebirds
stuck in our hearts

as though nests are forever
as though we own our hearts

but the rest of us live in the water
and the bluebird can only fly for so long

before there is no more land
for landing.


(This was written after listening to Bukowski's "Bluebird" as a "poetry challenge" from another blogger, Scot Young, from Be Not Inhospitable to Strangers)

Thursday, June 26, 2008

collaborative poem

The forest sang of moans from years past,

while crumbling leaves of sorrow the blackbirds pecked for morsels--what luck!

Hidden among the knots and gnarls of bygone woes,

centuries of secrets stitched like a patchwork quilt.

Ancestors are breathing through the branches.



(note: different people from different blogs wrote each line, starting with Gary Hess and his Poem of Quotes Blog...mine is the last line here)

a little scorpion, and f**k the chicken salad!!!

I'm sorry, but I really don't care how small a scorpion is, it's still a scorpion. I had no idea they/we have them in Georgia. Well, I found one this morning under a small pile of clothes--a Freakin SCORPION! It was downright harrowing!...I called my landlord, my mom, my sister, and told everyone at work. Apparently, they are very common here. UGH> So anyway, I seemed like a little ninny whiney scaredy cat to the local folks. I work with a girl who cut her hand, almost to the bone...10 stitches, and after a visit to a doc-in-the-box, she went back to work! I live on another planet from, sometimes, especially right now, it feels like EVERYONE. Today, when extremely busy at work, I forgot like 5 times that we didn't have Chicken Salad...at least 5 times! I'm hard enough on myself, but to these people who have done restaurant work their whole lives, I must really suck to them. I am always getting corrected, or laughed at. I feel like I'm kicking ass, and then my blood-sugar gets low, and with no break in a nice little 4 hour rush, and really none the whole day...I don't sit down, and if I eat it's in between working...I forget shit. I get flustered, and I already don't want to be doing this for a living...not that I could even if I wanted to! SO, all I can say is UGH> And they thought it was hilarious that I forgot about the chicken salad so many times...FUCK the chicken salad. I don't give a rat's ass about chicken salad (though it is good)...I want to be TEACHING, Writing, living in academia land, where I am using my brain in ways that are WORTH it...Fuck the Chicken Salad!
I sound like a little bitch I guess, but GEEZZ...life can be truly frustrating sometimes...so I'm finding me a shrink...

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

a poem a day? or maybe one a week? we'll see...

Georgia, the whole day through

The red ant hills make
my yard a war zone...little
mines.

And the Georgia heat looms,
curling under my
armpits

sweat dripping from my
crotch

and I have the Big Dipper
and Orion (who can remember the other ones?)
bitten into my legs.

These seem like nothing
now that I know
about the scorpions.

spring poems (Sylva 08)

Fallen Nest

twists of shadows
tangle on the ground
this evening

I vibrate under the moon
in a lunar bliss

the tiny bird eggs
fell on the porch
where I discovered them
broken

they’d made a nest in the
dead Christmas wreath
still hanging from 2 years ago
so it goes—

the creepy yellow guts seeping
from white shells

volumes of lives are broken in this way
and the moon keeps rising
somehow bridging
the chasms we create

and the beaks peck
working on the silvery layers
of our insides
and though there is discord

there is still the milky light
that makes the shadows


chainsaws

someone is using a chainsaw
across the valley
green is emerging from branches

I remember climbing the tall
pines
in Panthertown.

now there is a second chainsaw,
a cacophony of buzzing
a harsh harmony
and the trees are scared

winter haikus-from this winter in Sylva

The Southern Appalachians
move slowly
under the day moon


Someone did a naked
snow angel- I can see
the butt print


sitting at the wood stove
the frozen logs
hiss dry


on the ski lift
we shielded our faces
from the blowing snow

The wail of a harmonica
stirs a sadness

Junkraft

http://junkraft.blogspot.com/

This is an excellent project!

Thursday, June 12, 2008

the precipitation of a lifetime

To Build a Rainstorm

(finally, it rained!)

pull the drops of water from
a cloud and take yourself out
from under that umbrella

nothing will keep you dry anyway

even the dew, sweat, and
precipitation of a lifetime
of clouds can't exist without
the carpets of water

that fall from our
brains
and slide from mountains into
pools in rocks

mold a raindrop in your
hand
and carry it thousands of miles

to the furthest forest

Monday, June 9, 2008

no casualties...whew...

Well, there might have been a few bugs that died in the mower blade, but other than that...I made it through the front and side yards...whooo...! And have only a couple of red ant bites...

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Georgia Dirt

Argh! I just finished mowing my mostly-dirt backyard...It's way too dry here, and there are like fifty-thousand RED ant hills in my yard, at which I freaked out when I mowed over one HUGE one and got ants on me...red ants are painful!
I need more actual grass in my yard, but that requires rain, and we all know about the drought. My goodness, me oh my...I have blisters on my thumbs from that old lawnmower, and I don't think I could have gotten myself that dirty through-hiking the AT! Wow...I feel better now that I've taken a shower, and tomorrow, the saga of the front and side yards...pray I don't die!

Saturday, June 7, 2008

red corn

I just recently realized that a number of my poems have "red corn" in them...gonna have to go back and find them all...
A friend suggested that it's part of my Cherokee ancestry...I'll bet that's true!

fat girl

After all of my years, (35 of them), I often, very often, think about my body...what I look like, what other people see...and I worry.
I no longer binge and purge. I am no longer skinny...and still think I'm fat...
At 117 pounds I remember thinking I was fat, feeling fat, looking at my body in the mirror, finding the flaws, obsessing over the scale.
I haven't had a full-length mirror in years, and no scale either, for that very reason.

And here I am, at approximately 170 pounds, only 5"1, and I usually embrace my curves much more readily than I ever did my body before. The thing is, I still worry what others think. It's actually very disconcerting. When I asked some friends I hadn't seen in many years, what is different about me, they said I have better self-confidence. And this is true...most definitely, but I still don't feel "as good" somehow, as the skinny girls, like I don't exercise enough, which I don't, but can still keep up with the best of them...hiking the AT, doing 2 miles on the elliptical, living, really living my life.

I don't see myself as God does, and I too often DON'T see my beauty. When I do, it feels good, but then I look at pictures...of me now, or of me "before." I remember, when I look back at those pics, worrying about what other people thought, not feeling "good enough" and thinking I was fat. I look back at times when I knew I was thin, but still felt fat. I mean, I guess it is a disease.

And now, at my largest, I guess, I can see my beauty in ways I didn't. I love my big boobs, and talk about my big butt and wear revealing clothes proudly, but I still see it, and still feel "not good enough."

I'm not gonna blame the media, or culture, or society, or whatever. I know the factors, and I know myself, well enough to know that isn't all there is. There is God in my heart, trying desperately to show me my SELF.

I can exercise, and the endorphins help, and I lose weight, and that IS a good thing on many levels, but my heart...it's my heart that needs exercise, and not in looking to other people for some sense of self-esteem. The more I love myself, the more I will want to go out, get exercise, and be the woman I know am.

Looking back on those pictures of the "skinny" me was hard, even harder knowing I felt fat even then...I mean, whoa.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

update from last post...

Well, finding a great client (with a swimming pool I can use!) and everyone pulling their own weight at work and the fact that His strength is in my weakness are all things that make me happy...

Monday, June 2, 2008

new job, new clients, new stress

Now I don't want to go around being pissy all the time, or really even some of the time, but GOD it's hard to start a new job, esp one that on my first day I worked 8 hrs with no break...that's gotta be illegal...so anyway, then I was told after 8 hours of quite tough work (it is a really busy restaurant), that I could have asked for food, or just gotten some...but I never had the time. Now I know, I have friends that work 15 hour days, but I would LOSE MY MIND. Not because of the physical stamina, but the mental stamina. I am not WEAK mentally, but very conscientious about the job I do, whether it's working at a restaurant or teaching or writing...I want it to be done right, and we live in the most fast-paced world, and I don't like it. I hate to be rushed. And I must live with it. I know this. However, I can't wait for the day, and I thought that it had to be by now, that I will no longer have to work in a restaurant..(since I have a Master's Deg, and 5 years' experience teaching I didn't think I would, but I still do). SO, I am even rushed in covering curriculum in teaching, but that is more about organization than anything. And I'll be the first to admit, it has taken a LONG time to learn how to be organized, and I still basically suck at it. BUT, here I am, and at least I have work my 3rd week in the area.
I also have at least 2 tutoring clients coming to me, one starting next week. This is good too. Something I can take my time doing. I want to do it well. I want to have peace. So if you are someone who prays, in whatever form, please pray for me to have peace through all of this newness, because as exciting as it is, it is still stressful.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

17 years later...

What??? Anna, a friend from High School, that I haven't seen SINCE then, just left my house...nutty!

We went out last night and had Pinot Noir, crashed a wedding reception (took a pic of ourselves with one of the disposable cameras on the table!), talked to lots of strangers...remembered the Divinyls song "I Touch Myself." (There's a history in that one.)

She and I are quite alike, and after so many years, our paths have collided once again, which makes sense, considering our "peeps" that we keep. hehe.

Our ways of communicating are SO similar, like a boxing match, interrupting with a right cross, or a left hook, and staying in rhythm the whole time. We both laughed a LOT, and what is better than laughter...can you think of anything? Sex, okay, but laughing during sex, now...yo...

Anyway, back to Anna...we discussed our dress and hat collections and coffee addictions and took some wonderful pics...these will be for my myspace, until I get a flickr or decide to put them on here...(note to self, figure out how to do that...)

So, full circle in some strange way, with coffee and wine in our bellies, and big hugs when parting (but not for 17 years this time!)

I'm so gonna visit her in Venice, CA...freakshow central!