Into the Wild Blue(Africa)

Alright, I know it's only the 24th of March, but I'm excited so I'm making my NaPo thread early this year. Sue me.

Or rather don't, because I have zero money and actually all you can win from me is crippling student-loan debt and car insurance payments.

Spoiler

Some poems to potentially look forward to this month:

How I Learned to Love Toledo
Six Impossible Things
Why I Cry at Final Bows
If I Were a Color
No/Room for Silence

How I Learned to Love Toledo

Not the way I learned to love
the long dirt road that ran between our house
and the soybean fields, farm and forest:
you can't learn something you've always known,
the love of a country sunset startling gold and green.

Nor the way I learned to love Detroit, sitting
beside my father on the bus as the city rushed by
out the windows, winding through Eastern Market
to the sounds of a children's choir,
the wild colors of African art painted by men
in turbans and robes just as bright.

I did not learn to love Toledo as quickly
as I learned to love Port Huron,
walking the streets between classes to find
the Coney. I did not learn to love Toledo at all,
in fact,
until late in the second year
and I did not learn to love it
in the way I have learned to love all my other homes,

but, rather,

in the skyline that reminds me of
Detroit, the farmers market where I linger
over bushels of onions and carrots and buy
bread I don't need because
I love the smell of rosemary. I love Toledo for
the pillars and steps of the art museum,
white and Grecian in the way of Washington,

for the sunlight glancing off the windows of
the Fifth-Third building like the one in Port Huron.
I love Toledo for the metropark that lets me
escape the city within the city,
green and wet and hilly and silent. I love Toledo for
the books I've bought and the book I've written,
for the price of a ticket at the cinema and
the price of my first pair of Converse.

I love Toledo in a quiet way, not in memory but
in future. In the way I imagine our apartment,
set with the bookshelf and corner table
my grandfather made, the buffet that belonged to
my great-grandmother, the way I worry
about how our children will smack into the
table leg and break it or our cats will claw at the sofa.

The way I learned to love a young man with
constellations of birthmarks on his back,
the way babies learn to walk:
the way I am still learning to love myself.

Six Impossible Things

1.

To roll out of bed without
tangling in the sheets
the way my mind is tangled with
the worries of the night before,

nightmares and unanswered prayers.

2.

To let the soles of my feet
move bare across the floorboards,
smooth and silent
and golden in the sunlight

and imagine that the day
might move the same way.

3.

To sing as free
as the starlings out my window,

their feathers flashing
in the morning light.
To flit from tree to tree
with a bare branch and abundant snails
my highest hopes.

4.

To come downstairs and
put on a record, to dance
about the living room to Jethro Tull
or Bob Seger,

flying smooth and fast as a silver bullet
toward whatever obstacle may come.

5.

To listen to the clink of dishes,
the hiss of the coffeemaker into my cup,
and hear in it music, the peace
that might be mine

instead of the clank and clatter of the world.

6.

To wake up each morning without
the world burning in my chest,
the fear and hatred that
whispered to me through the night.

Instead to arise with the dawn in my eyes
and a breath in my lungs,
hope pumping in my heart like blood.

Spoiler

This is a list poem I was going to write a blog entry about and decided to use for NaPo instead.

Things That Make Me Feel Like a Grown-Up

Getting approved for a credit card
that I was rejected for two years ago.
One student loan payment,
car insurance in a lump up front,
and the phone bill each month:
good credit.

Buying bathroom necessities instead of
toys, junk food, and clothes I don't need.
A new laundry hamper,
a towel of my own, and
two pillows not lumpy from years of use:
responsible spending.

Cooking a meal for myself when
I could just have a bowl of cereal for dinner.
Baked tilapia and sweet potatoes,
scrambled eggs on toast,
or tacos that will last me for days:
real food.

Cleaning the house when
I'd rather scroll through the Internet all day.
Fresh sheets,
clean floors,
and an empty dishwasher:
time management.

Running a classroom, as opposed to
wrapping meat at a grocery store.
Giving out new books,
teaching new concepts, and
making snap decisions:
real job.

Having a savings account because, for once,
I have enough money to save some.
Money for groceries,
money for car insurance,
and money for a wedding:
not broke.

But there are some days when
I still don't want to get out of bed.
Stay in pajamas,
marathon Supernatural, because
being a responsible adult is just
too hard.

It's the kind of day that needs
stick-shift driving foot on clutch to rub away
the itch that clings to the soul

classic rock blasting through the stereo
Jethro Tull or "Born to Be Wild,"
Bob Seger, Kansas, and Metallica blasting
until you can't hear

wind-blown hair in the open window
snip cut curls shorn onto the floor
the wind whips your hair back
and the sunlight warms it

leather jackets and denim to keep you warm
and oil-free while you change the headlight
change the fluids change
any kind of change that keeps
the motor running.

Today is the kind of day that needs
a change
stick-shift music haircut oil anything
anything that keeps the motor running

Reasons to Hate English

Read and read
lead and lead

prove
love
dove and dove

through
cough
tough and trough

cue
queue
ewe and you

Spoiler

Good luck figuring out how to read that one properly, eh?

That reminds me of the GB Shaw one.

gawd. I love your poems so much, I can just read them over dozens of times.



Toledo is possibly my favorite one, I can just relate with it and just the picturesque way you paint each of these places all kind of snowball into that last line: Love Toledo the way I am still learning to love myself, I mean, what a fff-ing line. Yes!

And where Toledo is gold and happy and inspiring, 6 impossible things pangs and saddens, this is like every dreamer in the world, everyone who is longing. Both of these poems share in the sincerity of voice, it's the kind of reaction where you say to yourself: these are the things I always think about and I can never say it any better myself -- and that hits me with Grown Up as well, I feel like I'm going down a checklist and going yup, yup, yup, but also feeling guilty because I haven't cooked a dinner for myself in weeks! Poem 4 gives me the feeling of getting up and going out for a ride, it is very evocative!

English just made me laugh xD

A+ gif usage, madam. Glad to have you back

In the evening the woods
are blue with memory that
weaves through the tree-trunks like mist
and clings to the moss that
grows in hidden places,
in the cracks between
rough bark and
smooth skin.

Elizabeth

Her name has never really belonged to her,
or, perhaps,
she has never really belonged to her name.

The confidence in the slant of the l,
the husky beauty in the buzz of the z:
not her.

She is more the quiet type,
the hidden-in-her-bedroom type,
the reading-Mary-Oliver type,
the solitary-walk-in-the-forest type.

Not a queen,
nor an actress,
nor a fashion-designer.

But sometimes,
just for a moment,
she catches hold of her name by the tail of the h.
Glimpses it and holds on because she knows it to mean her:
when she sees it printed on a note,
her;
when she hears it roll off the tongue of a blue-eyed boy,
her.

A bird-watcher,
a book-reader.

Not actress, designer, or queen--
but sometimes
she catches a glimpse
and it's enough that she aspires
to be herself.

Miley: Pregnant and Scared

It's a strange kind of faith,
the religion of Trust.
Our church is like God,
everywhere at all times:
when you let someone borrow
your favorite pair of shoes,
let them take you
out on a date,
let them hear
your story.

All you can know about anyone
is what they tell you, and everyone
lies--
that's what the nonbelievers think,
people so beat up by
life and circumstance
that they have no faith.

Does he love you?
You can't know, you must believe.
Is their marriage crumbling?
You can't know--tabloids
may claim it, they may deny it--
Is she pregnant and scared?
You can't know, and the truth
may not come out,
so you must choose what to believe.

When every story we know is a case of
he said, she said,
the only truth you can know
is your own.

A forest frozen in frost and silence
Bird calls ringing crisp and clear across cold air
But the rush of water and thunder
Of falls is not stilled by wintery hues
The smell of damp soil, the perfume
The earth spritzes with every downpour
Before she girds herself in green:
Moss, bulbs, new leaves with snow
Perched atop them like budding flowers

I was married in
a white sundress and green
Chuck Taylors with white
polka-dots.

They all said:
That’s tacky
Why wouldn’t you want your wedding
to be perfect?

To me,
that is perfect
Comfortable, beautiful, and happy
But they think
it shows a lack of money

They shake their heads and
whisper behind their hands:
A marriage can’t last
without money.

I want to say to them,
why do you think I’m spending so little
on the wedding?
We need money for groceries,
for rent, for cars, for kids.

So I wear a sundress and sneakers
instead of plunging myself into any debt greater
than student loans.

But I would like to say to them:
Money doesn’t make a marriage.

Spoiler

Actually speaking, I'm not married yet. One more month.

Spoiler

Just on a city/classic rock kick lately. Sorry.

The clank and rumble of the
railway yards, the trains
clattering down the tracks
and the drawn-out lonesome
whistle:
I cannot sleep without it.

Part of the rush of the city,
the gleaming racecar colors
and sunlight shining
on the manyvaried windows
of office buildings.

Downtown. Sky-scrapers.

Like a utopia
across the river--
anyplace is beautiful at
this distance.

And sometimes closeup.

Like when I'm walking on
brick sidewalks, through stalls
at the farmers' market or
driving
on 75 with the windows down
and my dad's old CDs blaring.