On West Egg

So when I was getting ready to head up to Kofenya to finish editing my sonnets before I record friends reading bits of them so that I'll not have unusable recordings of old versions of the sonnets, I notice the sky is overcast, so I decide I'll head past my car which, as I no longer have a Miami parking pass, is located a good ten minutes away, but on the way to Kofenya.

Had I not been distracted by the totally awesome and engaging posts at the one feminist blog that I had still open in tabs (but don't now and OHGOD I'M NOT SURE I BOOKMARKED THE PLACE SHIT) when I went to shut Brian down, I'd not have still been five minutes from my car when the rain and hail started.

And that, children, is why Feminism is evil. D:

Man, did I screw myself when I made two of the thrice-reused lines of the fifteenth sonnet require rhymes with "truth".

THERE ARE NO USEFUL RHYMES WITH TRUTH. I mean, I could have kept pairing the same two words, since the fifteenth sonnet did have a decent rhyme pair there, but I don't think I'd be graded well using the same rhyme pair FIVE TIMES. It'd be like rhyming a word with itself. It's just not done.

I'm going to wait until I have the final version of the project done before I post the sonnets here, BTW. I'll want to include the recording along with them.

I decided I was going to write a crown of sonnets for my final project in my one class. Thank god I was smart enough to start with the fifteenth (which, for those of you who don't know crowns of sonnets, is the one made up of the first lines of the previous fourteen, which are also the last lines of the ones before them - if you took out the fifteenth, they'd thread through each other in an unending loop).

What made it that much harder is that I'm alternating speakers throughout the previous fourteen, so I wrote the fifteenth as a two-voiced poem. So some of the lines in the fifteenth are one speaker, some the other, some both, and all have to work as something either speaker would say, since they'll be the first line in one speaker's sonnet and the last in the other's.

It took me over an hour to write fourteen lines.

BUT!

I wrote two of the earlier ones in significantly less than an hour, so I should have my "rough first draft" ready to hand in tomorrow, even though when I asked what a "rough first draft" for a crown of sonnets would be, my professor decided that ONLY THE COMPLETED SONNETS WOULD COUNT SALKDGJ.

So, to justify having the project already done like two weeks early, I'm going to record them being read and hopefully get some music banged out to go with.

WHY DO I DO THIS HRRRRRG.

Morning Ritual

There's a moment,
in the early morning.
Nature is just starting its day.
The sky has finished it's trip to blue,
but the rest is just starting.

We've a curious reversal with it in winter.
On the days nature gets active first,
we say "fuck you" and stay in our blankets;
on the days we're out first,
nature does the same.

But my favorite days for this time
are the cool summer days,
when there's a slight chill in the shade.
Bodies of water sit as still as possible,
and sound carries at just the right quietness.

The air is meditating.

Travel

My voice,
based on the
blandness
of the Midwest
and of CNN English,
escapes it.

It reaches out,
finding new sounds:
to Canada when it’s time to go out,
to the south when I’m talking to y’all,
overseas – always when I speak to myself –
sometimes running through ancient Rome,
sometimes taking a jaunt to Asia,
sometimes turning phrase like the children of the former empire,
on the Isles, or the convict’s continent,
and when I’m really excited, it runs to South America to pick up the rapid, soft patter.

But always,
always,
always,
it creates sounds of its own.

Look. Be. Live.
I want to find a secret path.
I want to walk out of Collins, look around, and find a sidewalk I've never noticed before.
A sidewalk that goes somewhere nobody's ever been.
A sidewalk that gives way to a dirt path, that gives way to the faintest hint of one, perhaps only consisting of gaps between trees.
A faint hint of a path that I can follow home whenever I decide I've gone far enough.
A faint hint of a path that will take me to the point I left off last time I travelled it almost immediately.
I will soldier on until this path leads me to My Place.

My Place is not idyllic.
My Place is not pastoral.

My Place is flawed.
My Place is rotting.
My Place is sickly and dying.
My Place is the ruins of What Once Was.

That is why it is My Place.

What Once Was is only the merest shadow of What Will Be.
I will cure My Place.
I will remove the rot from My Place.
I will fix the flaws of My Place.
I will take the death and hate and loneliness and isolation of My Place into me and make them Me.

I will take them into Me and that will become Who I Am.
I will take Who I Am and purify it. And purify it. And purify it.
I will purify it until the death is life.
I will purify it until the hate is love.
I will purify it until the loneliness is feeling loved.
I will purify it until the isolation is outreach.
And this will be Who I Am.

And I will take Who I Am to My Place.
Who I Am will take My Place and turn What Will Be into What Is.

One day, What Is will become What Once Was.
But not for a very, very, very long time.
And after that very, very, very long time, My Place will be A Place.
And after that very, very, very long time, Memory will be My Place.
And in Memory, for the very first time, I will find Peace.