Just Like Me

Peacock Feathers

Because I've missed too many poetry slams this summer, and Jenny Lewis has a new album coming out, and I'm surrounded by bills on my bed, and right now, "Plane Crash in C" seems to have been written for me and about me, the only thing to do, really, is post another silly poem I wrote.

PEACOCK FEATHERS

I have a bouquet of peacock feathers
in my room that's again my room,
just not quite the way
it was before. You see?

The ceiling fan keeps knocking
the feathers around, but one
stands, defiant, in the same place
as always.

And the green of the walls blends
into the green of my yoga mat
and the green of the towel
stacked clumsily next to my clothes
tossed carelessly but
purposely

on the floor of the room
that is my room that was
my room that holds the bouquet
of peacock feathers

that are so goddammed beautiful
to me
and for the life of me
I can't explain why.

Poetry Slam Tuesdays: This Stupid Tattoo

THIS STUPID TATTOO


I hadn’t written anything in two weeks
and my journal was mocking me with its empty pages
and all of my pens kept drying out in my waitress apron
and my elbows and wrists and knees and shins all hurt
from carrying trays and hot plates and tripping over kitchen mats.

I still hadn’t figured out why
I wished to be in two places at once
and why no one quite seems to get THAT,
and no one here quite seems to get ME.

Because of all these THINGS,
because of all these THOUGHTS,

Where once there had only been pale blue veins,
now there is this: an open book with blank pages.

This thing on my wrist.

It’s ridiculous and it’s perfect
and I’m not sure if anyone really gets it
or if I even do,
but it’s there now,
and you can’t make me take it off.
So stop staring at it like that, ok?
I'm still me. I promise.

Right now, all I can really do is wait,

and wear Rene’s t-shirt
and stare at my cat
and wonder what this stupid tattoo
EVEN MEANS
and listen to Neil Young

and decide how to live with myself
when I disappoint all of you again
by going back to Chicago
where things make sense,
where I actually fit in,
where I belong.

It’s just like this stupid tattoo.
You don’t have to get it.
You don’t have to approve.

It’s just that it’s here,
and I can’t change it,
and I can’t change me,
no matter how much I’d like to,
no matter how much I wish
I could just stay here
and make all of you happy.

These pale blue veins now pop out
on the pages of my book
that’s open and blank
and waiting.

I have to go.

July 6, 2010

Monday Mix Tapes: Lost Where I Belong

Love. (hat tip to my friend Brad! You know my music taste too well.)

London, From the Top of a Bus

you must be somewhere in London / you must be loving your life in the rain

(Ain't that some shit?)

Today is a lovely day for new music. First, I discovered I could stream Sufjan Stevens' new "All Delighted People" EP and then THIS happened.

Via Pitchfork:



Never has telling someone to fuck off sounded so delightful! God bless you, Cee Lo Green.

"And I'm like, FUCK YOU, OOO, OOO, OOO!"

Clear as Pictures in Our Heads

E.B. White once wrote, “Sometimes we regret our failure to write about things that really interest us. The reason we fail is probably that to write about them would prove embarrassing.” He then proceeded to list a few of these things. And, of course, they weren’t really embarrassing at all. In fact, these things that had interested him that particular week were pretty brilliant and rather poetic observations, such as: “the head and shoulders of a woman in a lighted window, combing her hair with infinite care, making it smooth and neat so that it would attract someone who would want to muss it up,” and so on.

If I could write about the things that really interested me in the past week, the things that “stand out clear as pictures in our head,” as my man E.B. put it, I’d probably write about things such as: the way my cat Layla curls up and sleeps on my New Yorkers and journal, instead of any other part of the bed; my aunt Deborah’s homemade “English cake”; Ray LaMontagne’s voice; how sometimes, when I drive home from a particularly tedious night at work, I listen to the “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” soundtrack and pretend I’m riding a bike in the Spanish countryside instead of driving across central Indiana; and finally, but most importantly, I’d write about how utterly satisfying it can sometimes be to write one really long, winding sentence full of semicolons and know that absolutely no one can tell me to edit it.

From the land of sky blue waters ...

HAMM'S BEER!



Do you think by "the land of sky blue waters" they meant Knightstown? Hmmm ...

Correction, Boy Wonder!

Oh, YES. Thank you, Bitch magazine, for making my Sunday evening complete.

"Correction, boy wonder: It's my electronic BatGirl compact with a laser beam. Which will destroy ANYTHING!"



HA! Hell yeah, BatGirl!

Via Bitch.

Girl Talk

Let me preface this by saying I watched far too many Def Poetry clips on YouTube the other night after bumping into someone from high school. Not to mention I work with quite a few teenaged girls—sweet, cute, then out of nowhere catty as all hell—that remind me just why high school can so quickly turn from carefree to traumatic.

So, if you're feeling brave enough to jump into the high school version of my brain, read my poem after the jump. It's called Girl Talk.

Baby, Baby, You're a Liar

My song obsession of the week. Perfect ending track to an incredible movie ("An Education").