Writings on the wall

Wow. I’m just about caught up with all of my poetry work. Eesh. About time. Here are two I wrote last nite. The first is a “not-quite-freewriting” exercise we had to do, where we had to freewrite for 10 minutes a day for 6 days. Then go thru and underline things that we thought were pertinant or fresh or good or whatnot. And then put those on a piece of paper. Then go thru them again and edit more, and put *that* on a piece of paper. Then we had to make a poem out of it.

Methods of Survival

Sane is crazy,
merely a matter
of semantics.

Swallow forty
white pentagonal
pills, then force

blood to bead,
transform from
blue to red

as proof of life.
Snap-tapping
clothes tumble,

magnetic keys
set off the tweet-
beeping locks,

clunking doors
open and close,
charts clank shut

harmonizing into
a symphony heard
only by those who

chose to listen and
others who cannot
help but hear.

Pale blue plastic
sealed by sweat
to cracked flesh

protects me from
hepatitis bacteria
laying in wait

on gray formica.
It can live months
without a host.

Humans cannot
survive more than
a week without water.
3.19.05

the snippets that I used:
3. Eleven minutes of awkward conversation. How do you suddenly connect to a person you’ve barely met, you hardly know? Even if she did conceive & birth you? Maybe I’m searching for something that isn’t there.

4. The noises here are somewhat comforting. The buzz of the lights in the desk. The tick of the clock. The snap-tapping of clothes tumbling in the dryer. The hum of the ventilation. Papers shuffling. Keys jingling. Doors clunking. The electronic high-pitch tweet beep of the door signaling that it’s read my ‘key’ and the thunk of the magnetic mechanism unlocking. Charts clanking shut. Soft snoring and plastic mattresses creaking.

5. Yellow wood. Yellow memories. Jay told me today that his father died of leukemia.

7. What makes a person crazy & what makes them sane? Aren’t we all just on a continuum? Like the Kinsey scale, only different. There is a pt at work who od’d on at least 40 ativan. Afterwards, they cut themselves with a knife to make sure they were still alive. The staff chuckled at this.

9. Cleaning with pale blue, latex-free, tight plastic gloves protecting my dry cracked skin from whatever horrors lay on the dull gray countertops.

11. I’m not overly fond of revolving doors.

——————————————————–
And this one was in honour of St Patrick’s day…we had to write a poem that drew on our heritage or ancestry or traditions or whatnot. bleurgh.

Tree by Leaf

I groan inwardly, sliding
a pen, folders, journal into
my over-full knapsack.

Eighteen years of schooling
had me lulled into a false
sense of security, into a

belief that never again
would I have to dig deep
into the melting pot of my

past, search for roots long
ago withered, delve into
a tabula rusa of history.

Yet here I am, again at the
cross-roads of trodden paths.
Raised in a family of mixed

race where the tie that bound us
was adoption rather than ancestry.
More than a decade of ‘Family Tree’

projects and ‘Who Am I’ essays piled
up, played a part in prodding me to
search for background and bloodlines.

I discovered that all my detective
work couldn’t create a heritage,
produce traditions, provide roots.

Leaving me more lost than found,
I lay it all to rest in hopes that the
wind won’t assault my branches

harshly enough to rip up the newly
formed fragile tendrils planted in what
little soil I have staked as my own.
3.19.05