I'll Tell You

i bet you think
i'm not sorry

and you think
i'm not sad
you think that your friendship
was the worst i'd ever had

you think
that i hate you

you think
i've moved on
you think
i'm only happy
now that you're gone

i'll tell you
i'll tell you
i'll tell you it's not true

but my heart is broken
and never will it mend
yeah my love is less now
for the loss of a friend

i thought i moved on
but know it isn't so

my soul, it aches for
the laughter that graced
my mind longs for
the banter that raced

every now and again
i think fondly of you
and i miss the days
when you thought of me too

cause you'd say you loved me
you said you do

i'll tell you
tell you
tell you
i'll tell you it's not true

Paris: A Love Lost, Revisited

Camembert on baguette! It's been far too long since I've had you! Mmm, and with a sweet Cabernet. I don't buy French wine, I wouldn't know where to start. So my wine is Californian...and my baguette is take-and-bake, because when you don't get it from a French bakery, that's as close as it gets from your average American grocery store.

I still remember the first time I had Camembert. It was my first meal in Paris. Probably on a baguette, no less. I didn't used to have expensive taste, and I would say I still don't; the cheese was on sale, b.o.g.o., which as a forever occupant of Paris trapped back in America, you can't pass up. That's European pricing! It's something Paris does to you. Not necessarily that it imparts on one a hunger for the extravagant, but rather leaves one wanting life to feel full of zest.

You might think it's cliche to eat cheese and a baguette on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower, but when you're doing it it's not.

Living in the city [Paris] just seems to make you feel alive. Life seems more beautiful (and terrible) there. It has a character of charm and romance unlike anywhere else I've been - not that I've been much of anywhere in the scheme of things. But it left a heavy mark on me; the dreamer in me always wanting to move on, feel the excitement for life the way I did when I was in Paris. To feel the enjoyment that can be in simple things like a walk, or a meal, or a commute.

In one way, it nearly ruined me for every other city - but in another it won my affections; it taught me something. Now, I seek to find the beauty in everyday life. When I go to a new city, I find what there is to admire; attempt to etch memories of that place in my mind.

Silly as it sounds, biting into a Camembert and baguette sandwich (one of the best sandwiches I've ever had), made me feel Paris again, for a second. And who wouldn't want to revisit a love lost, if it were possible?

Tentmaking

Tentmaking
Insides quaking
I know this is all for the better
- for the breaking
He's steady
A thing no one can understand
When heart weighs
And I'm lost again
in a daze
Wondering what's become of my days
This internal haze
Set me ablaze
Just to feel something different
To feel the heat in my veins again
Not lost and cold-blooded
Like a two-faced friend
We've all got enough of those
- had enough of those
A problem that never dies, only grows
Until one tries and it shows
Like a little stream of light
Into the darkness
And yet I never seem to make
any sense out of this mess
And I confess that no matter what I profess
I'm still hopeless
from time to time
Losing myself but finding a rhyme
And so I sit
At my desk
Finding myself a little perplexed
as to how I'll get to what's next
And how long is this waiting
When I don't even know what it is I'm anticipating
Everybody's lost and twitterpated
but feeling underappreciated
hated
maybe even a little jaded
Cause the dream they had has faded
Crumbled into dust
Like lint found in your pocket
Question how to rock it,
Don't knock it
Work with what you got
Which is more than selling and smoking pot
It's a lot,
And it's more than what you're not
Chasing after wealth, and good looks or good health
Hold on through the swells
When the inside of you yells
But not a word comes out
Slash doubt
Pick up hope like an arrow
and put down the tarot
Take this life like a fight
Where you know that you're right
Press on til you're gone
And leave a story behind
One worth telling
That silences the yelling
Chokes back the tears
Mends the broken fences
That were gaping all these years
Don't dare waste another minute
Sitting in it
Counting your regret
When you could forget
Move on to something more
Let go of before
Become better; explore
Start to question what's in store.

Empathy to the Present-Day Romantic

You can't win 'em all,
And certainly not the ones you want,
They're just there,
To tease and to taunt,
To keep you on your toes,
Heart entrapped in the throes,
With each second,
Affection grows,
Or dies,
Tell yourself a hundred lies,
Some nice, some cold,
Buy into all you're told,
Wish love weren't bought and sold,
Feels like you're getting old,
And all this has ever been,
It'll be it all over again,
Seems like there's no end,
No tunnel to see light,
Stumbling alone in the night,
Reaching out for any hand,
Willing to help you to stand,
Grasp to any man,
When you find him,
If you can,
Might be your only chance,
Even if only a half-way romance,
Inevitable to end in heartbreak,
Forever a dull ache,
So it seems,
When he climbs into your dreams,
And you want him to stay but want him to leave,
Cause you don't think he's real,
But you want to believe,
But all you can feel,
Is the sting of losing,
Swallowed by a thing so confusing,
Walking around like you're only a half,
Of a better whole,
Constant searching for the mate to your soul.

The Good in You

I know
how you hate:
it is so furious
it smothers the joy in you;
the good.

I know
how you hurt:
it is furious
it smothers the joy in you;
the good.

I know
how you love, loosely,
it is so shallow,
yet contains all the joy in you;
the good.

Why You Could Learn A Lot About Me On Twitter: My Vulnerability Complex

This was written a few months back, and for whatever reason I forgot to post it.
__________________________________________________________

For most of my life thus far, I've considered myself a very open person. It's something I'd pride myself on. Sharing feelings and stories from my life? No problem. Transparency? Sure, why not! Vulnerability? Should be my middle name...

I should clarify that when I refer to "vulnerability" here, I simply mean emotional vulnerability, not an all encompassing physical or even social. I'm terribly afraid of being socially vulnerable.

My near-obsession with Twitter (okay, I'm in denial; it's full-on) is nearly 24-7 proof of my caution-to-the-wind attitude towards openness. I'm not aiming just to toot my own horn about how good I am at communicating; I don't think that's the case, to be honest. (Here I go.) Rather, I think there is some insight to be had here, just as I think there is in everything I write or post or talk about...

The other side of the coin to my constant use of Twitter and other social media is sort of related to a desire to communicate. The thing is: I'm an intensive processor. There are things that have happened months ago, and I'm still not done analyzing them. Now, there may be a tendency to think that means I'm socially and developmentally incompetent; why should it take that long to process non-milestone events? Which leads me to the next facet of my Twiddiction, if you will:

I am an over-thinker. Processing, analyzing, observing; I sometimes think these might just be fancy words to justify over-thinking...(but I'm still working on it, so I haven't decided yet. I'll get back to you on that). I can think of way too many possible angles or explanations to a situation. Being an optimist, I try not to worry too much about outcomes, but also for the most part feel that with enough observation, they can likely be predicted based on given factors. Even every time I write a blog post, it's usually because something has been spinning in my head, in spare moments for days or longer. Don't even get me started on the role of ADD or I'll lose my...

Anyway, lastly, in the psychological sense of the term, I am a verbal processor. So much so, that at times I will break out of my vicious over-thought to exclaim something...to myself. Whether or not I am alone. I get so lost in my own head and often my preferred way to sort things out is to talk about it. And if I can't talk about it, I write about it. "It" being anything and everything. And I, being by some sort of weird nature generally unafraid of being vulnerable, have many a time in my life felt close to people because I can be open with them, when in reality I haven't been particular about casting my pearls.

These things combined are the perfect storm for an all-too-open, ridiculous social media socialite. Add in the introspection, and here I am blogging about it; I know it. I'm aware.

All self-deprecation aside, my openness is something I've always prided myself on. Lately, I've been feeling it slip away, and for as analytical and over-thoughtful as I am, I can't put my finger on it. A willingness to be vulnerable is not an easy thing to come by. "Talk about your feelings? Who does that anymore? Everyone is just cool, all the time." Because we have this face to put on and to save. We have our facebook pages and our instagram lives.

Some close to me have told me that the caution towards spewing my every thought to any willing listener is a sign of maturity. But it still feels weird. I don't want to let go of it, because I feel like the transparency of taking on life with an understanding of imperfection is beneficial. It's part of the reason I love vulnerability! Relationship becomes so much more deep when you share a part of your life that is scary or difficult to share. Or maybe someone can learn from it, just by knowing what another has gone through and learned.

It's my sadness that vulnerability is such an ugly thing to so many, because it's place in my life has been life-giving. So I have been and will continue to try to cling to it, while reining it in. If you read this and other things I write and post, I hope you continue to enjoy my crazy rants!

Thoughts on the Modern

I was told once, by a Teaching Assistant in one of my classes, "If you're going to try to use allegory, you should know how to do it properly." If there was only one specific lesson I remember in college, that was it...But it's sort of how I feel about metaphor. Which, is yet again hypocritical because I love to use metaphors in speech, and I tend to make them up as I go - and that doesn't always result in an effective metaphor.

The point being, I have this frustration: having studied poetry often in school, people who write modern poetry seem to think that throwing a bunch of words in a blender then splattering the results on a page is good. Granted, I learned some "methods" that can make for really interesting results, and even have names, but the Kool-Aid didn't get me. Call me a snob, but it just doesn't bring the same effect. I find myself so often stumbling over my peers' work because, for as much as one could dig through the work of Wordsworth, Lord Byron or Matthew Arnold (whom I consider true poets because they thoughtfully and emotionally crafted their works) and find likely the meaning they intended, it can be a struggle to just plain make sense out of the modern style.

I've had my hand at writing it, and my fun, too, but that doesn't mean I fully support it.

In my senior year of college, I had the joy of taking a handful of poetry classes, as well as being the poetry genre editor for the U's literary magazine, Ivory Tower, for which I read through over two hundred poems. I came to see that the modern style is a mash-up of strange theories, practices, and band-wagoning butt-kissing - for lack of more fitting words. We would read something and there might be little commentary on what it might've meant (probably because no one knew), and then a discussion of something slightly relevant and highly political would arise. In comparison to the beginning of my college career's lit classes in which we studied the classics; lyricists and romantics, where we would have real discussions of a poem's meaning and it would sometimes take up the whole class period.

Maybe it's just my nature and therefore personal opinion, though I don't claim the sentiments here to be by any means or fashion an implied end-all-be-all analysis of the modern style (or perhaps it's post-modern, I never cared for all that...except the post-structuralists, I dug some of those theories). Rather, I think it's worth noting that not everyone buys into that, and if that is this generation of poetry, it might lose credibility and validity. There will be far too many people in twenty, - fifty years reading our writing going, what the hell is this even about? And I suppose poetry can be quite intimate; a way to express yourself not to explain your feelings to others, but if it is that, let it stay in your diary. It should not be so esoteric and nonsensical that not a soul will ever know what it means more than each word's definition in a dictionary!

I think of some of my favorite poems, and they're not only well-crafted and interesting to read, but they tell a story. And to me, modern poetry is like the awkward kid at the party who says something no one understands, though it's in English and we all just move on and pretend it didn't happen. In some ways I wish the literary community would do that; push past the common, superficial consuming-desire to be effortlessly and innovatively brilliant at the expense of actual depth.

I know I can't even live up to these; my own standards, but I think it's worth mentioning, nonetheless. It's worth breaking the cycle of mindlessly agreeing that all the pure nonsense out there is great, or even good poetry.

-For a modern poetry take on modern poetry, see: Commentary on the Modern

Commentary on the Post-Modern

The beauty is it doesn't have to make sense -
banana.
As long as you feel something,
the flatulence of the mind is
as pretty as any prose.
Whoops,
got your nose!
Help me find the
water
at the end of the hose.
Doesn't matter how the story
goes.
I step
you step
each in a different walk
down the block
into the soul-crushing depths
of this wantless life;
what's your brand of strife?
How does it paint
pictures with
tiny little grammatical brush strokes
for different folks
getting stuck in my bike spokes
on the wheels
but no one feels
anything anymore
we just write shit.

You; a dusty pile

You and I
are not so far,
and yet
reality has no strings attached;
no leg for standing;
no tunnel filled with light
or otherwise lacking,
two legumes
not from the same
whatyamacallet,
only resembling one another
in some relative ways,
ones that may or may not be worth exploring
if the dots line up...
and if they don't
you can amount
to just another passing fancy
that I collect in a dusty pile
in my memory
of past fancies.

Thought Purge

Let's face it, nobody's saying it, but I'm sure more than one of us is thinking it: Taylor Swift's music sucks. It's garbage. "22"? I'm 22, and I feel not only embarrassed that that's what people think of me when they learn my age, but degraded. (Hipsters are not a Halloween costume, Taylor, they're real people...real pretentious people, but real people nonetheless!) I can't help it, it's just how I feel. The disclaimer must be highlighted, this is just my opinion...but I also probably can't take your music taste seriously if you genuinely like her music for anything more than...nope. Nothing.

Radio commercials that are [not cleverly] disguised as actual songs, are on my top least favorite things ever. Sometimes I don't even know why I listen to the radio; I feel like it's ruining my life. Mostly when I hear Jared commercials, or the jingle about fish mcnuggets. For there is no more eloquent way to sum up my feelings on this: blech.

Philip Glass + Pandora + red= my ultimate relaxation? I guess I'm not helping by writing. But I know that I am, because it's my de-stress method. Word vomiting it all out - whether by written word or spoken. And then shed it by sleep.

Do you ever just want to PIT douchey drivers? No? Just me? Hmm...I think it'd be nice. Just like, oh, you think driving like an asshole (yes, this is me saying this...) cause you're cool is really worth risking people's lives, or the normalcy of them, for? Really? Cause for me, a little swerve to the left or right, and you'd know the real answer to that, real quick. Ugh. Commuting is also, apparently, ruining my life, too. I think the freeway is the hardest place for me to have grace for mankind...and thus, potentially my greatest hypocrisy is exemplified.

But then this morning on my way to work, I just saw this nerdy looking hipster (hey, Taylor...yeah, what? 22? Shut up.) dancing his scrawny little heart out to whatever music he was listening to, while driving down 62 in his hybrid. And it just made me laugh. Thank you, Hipster, wherever you are.

Fred Astaire is just so charming. What is it about him? Roommates and I just watched "Funny Face" with Audrey Hepburn, and we all agreed his face is funnier than hers...but what's not to love about Fred? Song dance AND wit - where do I sign up?

I know how to be a kiss-up when I want to be, but I don't know how not to be when I want to be. It's a problem sometimes.

As a woman, dressing up for work even though you don't have to makes coming home feel all the more like an accomplishment to be proud of; peeling off your heels like you just saved the world, but now you're off the clock, so it doesn't matter if an asteroid is headed for earth, your feet are sore!