I am as clever as the literature
refresh
I throw aside to fix
the Facebook screeds
in which I dwell. refresh
Classic lit ain’t got refresh nothing
on the dopamine addiction
of correcting the low_refresh_est levels
on the _refreshi_nternet. refresh
re_refresh_fresh
I’ve been looking at sending poetry for publication. Like to paper publications, publications that offer money or prizes. A number of the publications I like require that poems submitted be unpublished, of course, but that definition now includes publication to personal blogs.
I publish to my blog for a few reasons:
To a degree I feel a mighty need, likely from over a decade of blogging, to get stuff out there regularly. I like writing; I find it satisfying, and knowing people are reading makes it doubly so. But the prospect of formal publication (and, dare I hope, payment?) is awfully tantalizing…
…even as the thought of not posting a poem so I can try to get it published in a more formal way is irksome…
Which also implies thati believe putting it on a blog is not formal publication.
Which is curious…
To post or to publish?
PoetryI first started writing poetry in 7th grade. It was an English class assignment, the first one I’d ever had where I was aware enough to have read any poetry. It was the first time I’d ever encountered writing flow where I went from idea to full text very, very quickly. It was a brief flirtation with bliss.
Until, a week after turning in the assignment, my teacher read it to the whole class. Mine was the only one he read. My mind exploded. You could, like, be recognized for poetry? People could care about these little half-sentences? These tiny paragraphic stanzas? These words of deepest meaning to even a rotund, bespectacled, nerd in middle school?
Yes, please, I would like some more of this existential satisfaction, if you would. Just plop it down like buttery mashed potatoes with a thick, meaty gravy.
I wrote maybe two dozen more poems in the next few weeks, turning each in to my teacher. He, not really grokking the gravity with which I bled on to these pages, accepted them with a nod. He read them and, occasionally, offered some feedback with the bright red pen or a kind word between classes.
“Keep it up.”
I did. I wrote off and on through high school for myself when I wasn’t too busy with theater or studying for AP exams. I know, knew to the heart of my existence, that I needed to do this. I needed this to survive.
As high school progressed, I fell further into the rigors of Succeed and Achieve and started looking to college and padded pages of extra curriculars. Who had time to write? I had theater productions and AP exams and girls and… something. Something not right.
I sort of saw it coming, that first depression. I was filling my life with classes, college resume goals, girls that were really uninterested in me, friends that kept me around because they looked better around me. I recognized they were not in it for me but the invited me out, just enough, to convince me that I mattered. I was their somebody.
I stopped writing and fell into a deep, dark pit. I nestled in, drew blankets of dirt and earthworms about my shoulders, and settled in for a long winter of snow and sleet and cold pelting me while the world around saw sun above.
My little pit of deep, dark, comforting petrichor kept me in some weird stasis. High school happened; my fiends had dates, dances, and parties; I had earthworms, cold sweats, suffocation. You can’t write with a mouthful of dirt.
Oddly, in that I didn’t expect it but it makes mountains of sense today, writing saved my life.
In 1998 I started writing on OpenDiary.com. I wrote god awful poem after poem after poem. And slowly, thimble by thimble, I dug myself out of my pit. Each stanza was a worm here, a stone there; I cleared my way through dust and settling sediment and shouted, hoarsely, “This is not okay.”
Writing gave me perspective. It was a way for me to remove my mind from my body, to excavate the deeper Things entrenched in cavernous unknown holes that were churning, building pressure like lava under mantle. In that time, I met some nice internet people nearby that pulled me up onto a more positive level. They shook off a little of the crusted dirt and reminded me that, yes, you have value. Keep exploring, understanding, writing what matters to you.
“Keep it up.”
And I found a college that respected, if not expected a little weirdness where I could study poetry and writing and… learn something else that would actually pay he bills.
It is cliche, sure, to say that writing saved my life but I do think it did. The great expanse of green hills and flowers that the internet can be drew me into a world where I learned what friends could be which threw, into stark contrast, the lack of support, the subtle cuts, the occasional direct shovels of dirt in the face I received from my other friends. I understood what it was to be who I was without caveat.
And that is what I am finding today.
Do not think, O Reader, that I am lost in some fantasy of Great Writing. I am not. I am blowing off the dust from a machine I had previous kept well oiled. My mind, bolstered by little pills printed with edible ink and a constant stream of creative writing, has reconnected with a veritable mountain range of ideas.
But. It’s been nearly a decade since I’ve done this with regularity. I’ve blogged, sure, but poetry… what a different thing. I do not know strong from feeble, stout from brittle, good from bad. And I’d like your help.
I have created a feedback form (also found under the Specific Things menu) to which I will link from posts subsequent. It only asks for the title and your comments and does not track anything else. I want to know what you think. Was this entry or post or poem or picture good? Bad? Something specific worked really well for you? Something fell flat?
Should I keep it up? Should I keep it up?
Well… really… I’m going to keep it up irrespective of what you say.
But! Let us both endeavor to make it better. Let us make a mountain?
MeWorking for millennia
Thinking about
When’s it done
When’s it done
I don’t want it
Resisting it
I want it
That
Contact probing hand
That
Electric ozone sizzling air
That
Glass blossom perfect nipple fit
That
Mylar pompon crackle
That
65,000 volt finger release
O!
So
Many
Tiny
Teeth!
I wrapped this by hand,
with sinew thread,
taking one long afternoon
wrap (and breathe)
by (and breathe)
wrap (and breathe)
where everyone could spy
the exposed skin slowly sheathed
in tight, black threads
under blue sky and warm sun.
“That’s a lot of work”
“That looks so beautiful.
She is so beautiful.”
They say, dipping their own
bundles in blue baths.
I wrapped this by hand
with sinew thread, taking pains to bind
each limb
one (and breathe)
by (and breathe)
one (and breathe)
slowly
in tight, even wraps
under the blue sky and warm sun.
“How did you do this?
So beautiful. She is so beautiful.”
They say, taking care to hold
everything under water.
One breath
at (and breathe)
a (and breathe)
time, (and breathe)
one long afternoon;
I wrapped this by hand
with sinew thread
under blue sky and warm sun.
Then gathered it up,
held it close to feel the threaded skin
on skin and stepped
one (and breathe)
by (and breathe)
one (and breathe)
slowly
over to the baths and deliver it to
blue sky and warm sun.
“What color, so blue.
So beautiful. She is so beautiful”
They say, while the splashing
calms to unbroken reflection.
I wrapped this by hand
with sinew thread
in tight (and breathe)
even (and breathe
wraps (and
to draw all the air out.
Deep blue, warm sun.
So beautiful. She looks so beautiful.
Wrapped in sinew and blue.
Something in my brain shifted recently, both literally and metaphorically. I started seeing a therapist; rather, I started seeing a therapist again.
Two years ago, I saw a therapist. At the time, I was depressed and had been for a long while. Not the marbled, rich and red depression, the one I am too familiar with from ages ago before I was a well-formed human being. No, this was the low-grade, mealy and gristly sort of depression that lets you get just so close to success or completion or a breakthrough before you get a mouthful of sinew that forces you to put down the fork and walk away.
I wasn’t really taking great, consistent care of myself. I sort exercised. I sorta ate right. I sorta avoided alcohol. Except it was all half hearted. Not much exercise, not much good food, too much alcohol too many nights. The therapist told me that, well, you really need to get the basics in order first. Sleep. Exercise. Diet.
Yeah. she was right and I knew it. You have to do the basics first, get your ducks in a row, before you can really say you have something worth diagnosing.
Dilapidated House
I got my ducks, have them cute hats, and kept them all in a line. The last two years, I have exercised more consistent, eaten so much better, regularly skip the booze in favor of water.
And yet. I’m still flirting with that rich, red depression and keep knocking holes in the wall. It’s always there. Like I know I can keep buiding but I expect it, just down the road a little, to punch through a stud and the wall comes tumbling down.
So, when I went back to my therapist after two years I described all the things I hd done, all the objectively good things in my life that… That I just didn’t care about. That if they vanished, I would slump my shoulders, and say, “yeah, I probably didn’t deserve it anyway.”
Which is a problem. You start working with bricks adn cement, you expect the house to last.
“Yes, that’s not normal,” she said. “You are doing everything right; you have a great baseline now.”
“It shouldn’t work this way.”
Having someone else verIfy that you are not, in fact, a complete screw-up of a human being, is an amazing thing. I had spent, essentially, my entire life assuming I was doing something wrong. That my lack of regular, consistent happiness was not my own fault. Getting that validation for someone else, someone not in my head, was so… freeing,
So freeing. Like opening the windows in spring, I felt, for days after.
Fresh air.
So. She referred me to a psychiatrist who, very quickly, said precisely the same thing as my therapist after a fairly short discussion. I certainly have a family history of depression and bipolar disorder; my father, in particular, exhibits much the same behavior that I do and i likely inherited some imbalance from him.
The psychiatrist started me on a low dose of wellbutrin and it’s been a few weeks now. Having seen my therapist again since starting, she says things are Different. Whereas I, ever skeptical, think things are only different.
As in, I have noticed some additional awareness of and resilience to the spinning, gnashing, destructive cycles my brain manufactures (because they are figments) like an aging house. I cannot see when the foundation first cracks but I sure as hell can tell when that wall starts leaning the wrong way and the window gets stuck, god damn it.
And I right it. And let in fresh air.
It’s much of the little things I notice that lead me to believe I’m heading towards that capital “D” different. Like, I am writing more (like constantly, almost every day) and, what really amazes me (really) is that I’m editing more. That may not be much to many but it is new to me.
When you use writing as a way to feel something, expose something, to remove something from yourself, you cannot bear to re-read and re-view and re-work that thing; it is too raw, it is something to be shed.
Now, rather, I write these things to capture a moment or idea or emotion to let it stand as representation of this thing. It is something to craft rather than expunge.
This feels monumental to me, about me. The desire to do justice to that which I make, to get it right rather than get it out.
It’s hard to describe.
It is like I had a foundation, lots of bricks laid out, but they were misalignment. Anything placed upon them was tenuous and, though you could get that structure pretty high, it wasn’t going to last. The last few weeks, I have straightened out the rows, added mortar, and am keeping those lines true as I go.
I’m feeling better is what I’m saying.
I have the beginnings of a room of my own. I’ve put a comfortable chair in there and I’m thinking I may add a table.
Not too soon, mind.
But soon enough.
Me