Just Rework

Another long, long day holding a sick kid. So, I guess I will post some rework so I don't miss a day.


Truth can be obvious,
yet difficult to hear
and impossible to speak.
If only we could each choose
how free we want to be.
But other people choose
the freedom
they speak to us.

Well.... is it rework if it is still a partial poem even after I work on it more? This is really frustrating, but really all I can think about is sleep.

Random

So, I worked on something else for a surprising amount of time today, but it is not coming together. I'll do a partial poem for today and try to work out the other thing for tomorrow. At least I posted?


Smiles hiding bitten tongues.
Truth can be obvious,
yet difficult to hear
and impossible to speak.
Honesty can unite.
Honesty can polarize.
Reaching and pushing
in the same breath.

hmmm... it needs something. Oh well. I can always rework it in another post.

Tiffiny

I've lost count
of the number of times
you've saved me.
Reached out with
your calm and
made me calm too.
Few others
can make any day better
the way you can.
You love all of me.
My fun.
My crazy.
My teary
rambling songs.

(Note: I had to edit out the original last line. It was too cheesy, which is exactly what I should expect from trying to write poetry at 2AM when I'm completely exhausted.)

So... I made it through my crazy girls' night. Mostly thinks to my sister. That poem is for her. She came over several hours before the party and started working on my 'to do' list. She played with my boys while I cleaned and got ready. She is ALWAYS there when I'm freaking out to help me and tell me it will all be ok. I don't know how she ended up with all the calm and rational-ness (is that a word?) of the family, but I'm so glad one of us did. She is the kind of person who calls me when I'm sick and says "I'll be there soon with some homemade chicken soup to watch your boys and let you rest" and then does that and cleans my house and makes sure my boys are fine while I sleep off the worst flu-bug I've had in years. She always seems to know when I need her. I love that girl.

That's all I have for now. This counts as my 4/11 post even though it's really the next day, right?

Endings

I have serious issues with endings to poems. Here is an example:

Possibilities hold such hope
when no one else can see.
Dreams,
tucked safely in pillowcase corners,
seem alive and strangely tangible.
Few withstand.

Should that last line read: "Few withstand the harsh floodlight of reality's withering gaze"? Or is "Few withstand." okay? When I first wrote it, I had the longer sentence. When I re-wrote it seemed like the two words were enough.

Then I can't decide.

I kind of like how vague it is with the harsh 'few withstand' but I always feel caught between saying more and paring my poems down to the bare minimum. Usually the paring down wins.

Thank You Anäis Nin

Here is a newly discovered favorite quote:

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive." ~Anäis Nin
(Yes, I am aware that she was... ahem.... colorful.... but truth is truth, no matter who says it.)

This is what I love about quotes. That a person can so clearly state something which you were only aware of in the periphery of your mind. I know in some abstract way, I'd thought about this before. How it's amazing that a person can have such a range of friends. If you were to take my closest friends and compare them to each other on the surface, you might think I have multiple personalities. How can I really connect with each of these people? But isn't that one of the amazing things about friends? Why would you want an entire group of friends who are basically the same person? I love how each of my friends 'represents a world' in me. Have I mentioned I love that quote?


And since I now think no post would be complete without yet another partial poem:

I need to know what's next.
My nature dislikes the unknown.
Dislikes ambiguity.
Dislikes the indistinct.
Trusting invisible light is not easy.

That's all I have for now. I realize this is a strange post, but I feel strange.... something to do with a leaking propane canister and some other very odd happenings today. I might possibly blog about all of that over the weekend, although I am trying to keep this more for ideas/poems/thoughts rather than recounting the strangeness I call my life. So... yeah...

Broken and Quick to Judge

Something strange happened to me last week. Or, more accurately, I did something strange last week. I was going to the bank and a lady blew through a stop sign and almost broadsided me. As she passed, I saw she had two little boys in the back seat, about the same age as my boys. I pulled in to the bank and saw that the reason she was in such a hurry was to get to Starbucks. She got out of her car and went in to the shop, leaving her kids in the car. Something in me just snapped..... ugh. I turned around and went to Starbucks and confronted her. I didn't yell or curse or anything like that, but I wasn't nice. I basically told her she shouldn't leave her kids in the car alone and that she should be more careful driving with her kids in the car. I still can't believe I did it, as I really HATE confrontation and try to avoid it at most cost.

Of course, I've been thinking about this a lot, as it was SUCH an unusual thing for me to do. I can only hope that somehow that incident made her a little more aware, although she may have completely forgotten about it by now. I'm not saying I regret it, but the whole thing has me examining my own actions quite a bit. I keep thinking about the line from my March 22 post "I am broken and quick to judge" and how that is even more real to me now. Sure, maybe that lady was just an overly pre-occupied mom who should be paying better attention. But possibly she was late to take her kid to a medical appointment or late to meet a divorce lawyer or late to visit an ailing parent and her kids had kept her awake all night and she really needed that caffeine. I'm not caught up in the 'what if's' or 'maybe's.' I will probably never know what was going on for her that day. (Although I do have this nagging feeling that our paths will cross again... like she's the sister of someone I know or something crazy like that.) Maybe nothing. It doesn't matter. What I keep thinking about is that my first thought was not that she could need some compassion. My first reaction to her was that she needed to be put in her place. Is that love? I don't really think I need to write an answer for that.

So where does that leave me? It's not wrong to confront people. It's not wrong to be concerned about safety, especially when kids are involved. Honestly, I don't really think that lady is bad mom. She was driving a safe, family car and her kids were strapped securely into the appropriate car seats. She probably takes great care to ensure things are as safe for her children as possible and simply made a mistake that day. My lesson here is that I need to be more careful of my motivations. There is a great deal of difference between showing concern by offering a word of caution, and being so indignant over someone's carelessness that you feel it necessary to put them in their place. I'd like to say that it's nice how it seems when you're learning about something there are lots of opportunities to delve even deeper into the subject, but that wouldn't be entirely true. It's uncomfortable and humbling. And this is getting really long and wordy so that's all I'm going to say about it for now.

Oh.... and because it seems I shouldn't post two posts in a row without a partial poem..... here are some lines from an old poem. I don't like the rest of it so I need to write a new beginning.

How harmonious and easeful
to stay where it seems safe.
But what is gained from lingering
where faith and doubt are mingling?

Window Eyes

It's a pretty, sunny day. I'd like to think spring might actually be thinking about sticking around, but it's difficult since we seem to be in a cycle of really nice Monday-Wednesday and then a slow decline to really crap weekends -- it was cloudy and windy and snowed/sleeted a little yesterday.

I have a rewrite of something I wrote last month. Well... a partial rewrite. Of course it's incomplete. (I'm thinking I should change the name of my blog to 'Poems Unfinished')

Visible,
yet unobserved.
Window eyes show the soul,
but few hold a gaze long enough to truly see.
Knowing
takes more than a glance over your shoulder as you walk away.
Love
is looking long enough.

Now as I'm re-reading it I'm thinking it kind of goes with my favorite quote: "Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less."- Rabbi Julins Gordon
Kind of the same theme. That's okay, right? It would be nice to know how the poem comes across. When I wrote it I wasn't thinking of romantic love. The 'Love' in it is just supposed to be about caring enough for another person that you actually take the time to get to know them. Maybe I need to re-rewrite it?

The Non-Ending Poem

I have issues. (This is obvious to most people who know me. Thankfully some of them still talk to me anyway.) I'm starting to think that I have some serious writer's block. Or maybe I'm not even supposed to try to write at all. Here is my latest unfinished work:

Pins and needles.
The unknown becoming
un-numb.
Annoyance.
Truth thawing and
drip, drip, dripping
into my consciousness until
my old thoughts are gasping for air.

(Then I have some other crap I don't feel like sharing yet and then...)

Futile to attempt
to re-freeze this unwelcome thaw.
Alone, with new thoughts rising.

See what I mean? It's not TERRIBLE, but really not that good either. And I cannot seem to find what goes in the middle or determine if there should be something different or additional at the end. I think it kind of gets the idea across, but so would a well-written sentence or two in a blog or journal. I really want it to be something that someone else could relate to. Someone else who has experienced one of those moments where you realize something about yourself or about something important to you that makes you question just about everything that seemed clear previously. Not that you can dictate what another person gets from your work, but you can do your best to lead them in a certain direction. Maybe that's what I'm having trouble with. Maybe I can't even lead myself in a certain direction. Hmmmm.... maybe I should sleep on it.

Partial

I know I already mentioned how much I love certain lyrics. Here's another Jack Johnson one for you: "I've been feelin' kind of seasick lately. See you reaching to me, gonna save me. You or me, I would much rather take the fall."

I was going to say I was jealous of people who write things that I love that much, but I'm not. I'm happy for them that they are so talented and have found a venue through which to share their talent. Really, I just get a little freaked out by how much I can identify with the words of a complete stranger. I was working on something about it. I'm still working it out. It's really rough, but here is part of it:

I hear someone else's voice
expressing the unformed thoughts
swirling in my head.
I'm haunted by my heart
in someone else's throat.

I am really starting to hate that I have so much incomplete work. I guess that's part of the process, but I find it annoying. I mean, for most of it I've written more, but just think the quality, the phrasing, the ideas are so poor that I usually discard it. Then I'm left with a partial poem. Maybe I can publish a book of partial poems.... "Complete Your Own Poems" like the 'Choose your own adventure' books that were popular for about 5 seconds when I was little. Or maybe I can just put all the partials together and pretend it's a really brilliant poem and it's just above people who don't get it.

Ok, I completely digress so I think that means it's time for this rambling to end. At least I didn't miss posting today....

:P

Irresolute

I'm already starting to doubt my 'post something every day' idea. Is it worth it to write every day if what I'm writing is mostly nonsense or not good? I'm really not sure. Part of me thinks it's good to continue because if I get in the habit of writing I will eventually feel less rusty and will finally be rid of whatever crap is taking up brain space in my head. At that point I might start producing something worthwhile. Then part of me feels that it's just a waste of time to write if I have no real inspiration. Will that make whatever I produce seem watered-down, bland, and unimaginative? Why do I constantly second-guess myself?

Frustration!

At this point I've resolved that I will press on until I have proof either way if I should continue. I think.....


Overwhelmed with possibilities
and probabilities.
Paralyzing hesitation
comes in wave upon wave.
Wavering on the edge of resolution.
Grasping for conviction.
Uncertainty.

Wednesday.... Blah

Rainy, blah day. Not the pretty, yay-spring-is-on-the-way! kind of rainy day. It's chilly and windy and gloomy and I am having a totally off day. I can't seem to make small talk with people, can't seem to communicate effectively with managers, can't seem to banter with my work friends. We are talking about a seriously OFF day. I would like to go home and go back to bed and sleep till tomorrow. Oh time travel, why are you so elusive?

I really dislike being in a funk like this. Not that anyone likes being in a funk.... I mean, it's so frustrating when you get to the point where you just stop trying to make the day better because all your attempts only make it worse. One of my co-workers just told me, "it's been a day of interruptions" and I think that is very fitting. It seems every time I get started working on something or feel like progress is being made on the things I'm working on, something comes up and I totally lose momentum. (Right now I'm listening to a conference call for which we are missing one person and everyone is talking about random agenda items for things other than the call topic. Twenty minutes of trying to track someone down so we can actually resolve something. Twenty minutes we can never get back. *Sigh*)

Anyway, enough of that. On to something else. I've been working on this in my head for a while, but I'm stuck. Here are some of the lines swirling around in my head. I'll post them here for now and see if I can make more progress on them at some point in the future when I have more time to focus my undivided attention.

A metal chair scraping on concrete.
Something unfinished.
Firefly lights fading in the background.
Time, adrift in wayward thoughts,
colliding with forgotten lyrics.

And then.... nothing. (No, that's not the last line.... I really have nothing after that. I need to work this out. It's driving me crazy!)