The Fog Comes on Little Cat Feet............
-credits to Mr. Carl Sandburg for the title
the haze can be an afternoon snack
if you want to eat it slowly but not to fill
over the scenery, rolling, taking the day
and making it silk-screened,
relishing in the swell-like
discharge from dry ice
scanning below where roofs,
blue-printed-in a way-stand
erect and pencil-smudged
and motion marks the haze
to blow by branches, where trees were
once 70% absent
and crows run into crows,
and crows run into sky,
feet and talons wrapped, stitched,
in pine. When I see weather veins
twist wildly in undecided precipitation,
aviation ceasing,
migration becomes sickening
as tails, like vacuumed-up blankets
are spun as on a loom,
the chicken and the arrow
the chicken and the arrow
east, west, east-i can't remember
i push the haze
hearkening mallards
the ducks i see then don't
and when they go,
flung through a sequence of
the weather vein's turns
i close lids and hands
and create the fog
A standard for living often comes from philosophy, religion, or authority. Mine...well, it comes from a children's book. The Velveteen Rabbit offered one profound, yet simple principle and at age seven I learned that I did not want to forsake it. Be ugly, get old, smell awful, suck as things, get made fun of-but through it all be very, very REAL. Let's explore the velveteen of it all...
The Velveteen Rabbit
here's how I'm looking at things...
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Welcome to Taking Lessons from Toys!
Let's talk about the things that matter to a nineteen (and counting) year old: poetry, music, amazing places, and food...
A Place for Poetry...
half of me on land
[sitting in front of the ocean: 8.02.09; 7:35 am]
i’m imaginary while stationary
next to the woman who wakes the gods that I do not believe in
the gods in the haze, the swell
before noon, the little girl in me
breezed away, swept over,
overlooked, the little girl in me
only under my toe, only thicker
than the froth, the washed up
entities, my self, my fears:
the wars, whatever I am crying about
i ask the sun saluter
to my right to intercess, maybe it’ll
mean something more when she
reaches up
it just might within the slight
dusting of light and grain beneath
me, I may cry forever and
never cry again and I myself
may gently salute the sun
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