Mezami!: January 2008

Mezami!

Random musings, ramblings, stories, and my most embarrasing poetry and prose.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

For Tyler

You are in my head like a drunken gale-full breeze.
You are in my head like the clamber of the heat pipes in winter. Easy to overlook you are there until the racquet is raised; demanding attention like a two year old with a kitchen pot.
You are in my head; stuck here like the sticky film on the jar that you can never get smooth after removing the label. Catching bits of flour when used as the rolling pin that I, as usual, have misplaced.
You are in my head like a casually hummed tune; leaking out the upturned corners of my mouth at inopportune times.
You are in my head like a schizophrenic voice providing commentary on my day; turning me into that bag lady traversing the street muttering to herself in foreign languages.
You are in my head like that rich and satisfying flavor left in your mouth long after the coffee cup is finished.
You are in my head like the salt that lingers on your skin after a sunny dip in the ocean; tasting it still two hours later when you lick your lips.
You are in my head like the warmth of the sun on your back long after leaving the garden.
You are in my head like the cool air shut up in my house on a ninety degree day.
You are in my head slowly pushing at me like my cat wanting to play when I’m trying to sleep.
You are in my head like the fish that swims just off the fin of the shark; Brave enough to get too close to be eaten.
You are in my head like silence. When you focus on it hard the crickets and rustle of leaves emerge.
You are in my head like flowers at midnight; a thing so out of place that you can’t help but to stop and stare.
You are in my head like honey in tea. It doesn’t make it what it is, but it’s not the same without it.
You are in my head. You. Just when I’ve convinced myself I’m OK without you, I realize I really don’t know, because you’re still there. . . In my head.
You are in my head like damselflies and sandcastles.
You are in my head dancing with the one who is always there; slowly waltzing, trying to figure out how to avoid stepping on each others’ toes.

posted by ~KL~ @ 5:01 PM 0 comments

Your Scars in Mind

seven years
seven years she saw
ago
seared your scars in her mind
innocent errant maiden
slowly wrung out
by your selfish romance
empty words for
a hungry heart.
loved you she said
loves for you I say
you can’t
so she did
now she can’t
without your scars
hers
in mind.
I hear her scream in night-
mares of you dead
strangled yourself on your
Impeccably pressed ties.
still caressing your raised flesh
under her fingers
every slice of the blade
your arm her heart
trickled her artery
to your vein fed
she didn’t save you
couldn’t
but you just wouldn’t die
so she barely sleeps
wondering
if why it all was a lie.
even now as she loves
she loves
with your scars
hers
in mind.

posted by ~KL~ @ 4:59 PM 0 comments

Fabniese

There was this girl, Fabniese, in Haiti that I did not know so well. She was a good friend of Zach’s. She sang with a group of high school musicians. Their band is called Lor du Syel. It means Gold of Heaven in Kreyol. This was an amazing group of young teenagers who had more hope in their future than their parents of even us. We were supposed to be bringing hope to the people of the central plateau, but in the end children like Fabniese bring hope to me everyday. It made me feel like an impostor. Simultaneously my church at home sending me letters lauding my faith and courage to leave my life to live in such a place and hope for these people and I learn from them about my fallen nature; ending up giving and leaving very little.
Fabniese was one of the shy types of girls who so rarely said much of anything and looked at her feet more than anything else. The most you would get from her was a look that made you feel like she was actually looking up at you from her feet. She always spoke softly.
The first time I heard her sing, I was amazed. The power behind her voice is incredible. Untrained? Yes. Skilled? Absolutely. As I began to pick up more Kreyol and understand a bit more, I started to listen to Lor’s lyrics. They were simple, worshipful, and cutting. I was again amazed at the spiritual insight of this small group of teenagers. I watched this band continually give of themselves, body, mind and spirit, to the improvement of their community; traveling long distances for concerts to raise money for this or that cause, putting their sweat into building or improvement projects, offering their music to our work teams, an amazing ministry of prayer.; traveling all over spending days away from family to play and translate the Jesus film.
Many of them were planning and studying for their BAC I exam, a ridiculously difficult exam they take at the culmination of their studies. They must pass it to go to university, which no one can afford anyway, or to teach. These are the only routes out of a life of subsistence farming. But despite these pressures. . . they gave of themselves.
Here is a group of kids who can’t read music leading people to Christ through their music. Their music is beautiful and I soon learned that shy Fabniese wrote most of the songs. Here is a girl who looks up at people from her feet, yet has so much power and conviction inside.
I watch people a lot. There and here. Thinking back on Fabniese, I now watch people who watch their feet and wonder what kind of powerful things they have inside them. Is everyone a Fabniese in their own way? I don’t feel any such power in me. Most of the time I actually feel quite powerless. I don’t watch my feet and could never be described as quiet. I am shy, but don’t come across so. Maybe Fabniese stores up what others let trickle out slowly; letting it all out in one big waterfall gush of sound. Or maybe everyone really does have power. We just can’t see it in ourselves.

posted by ~KL~ @ 4:57 PM 0 comments

Patience

Branch on branch growing aches
Sandies and saltines both
Scratching itches and letting blood

He stands and broods

Gulls fly about and pick at shells
Pulling at pieces that once lived
Squawks and shrieks waves crashing
Lazily in earthly rhythym like
No time: His time. Wanting it
More and more as footprints
Expand years in the sand.

He stares at the sky.

Cats perch at the edge of the tunnel
Wondering after trains
Coming or going. Meanwhile
Dust settles on rails
Moss collects on walls
A licking of paws and mewing
Men standing checking wristwatches
Detritus slowly sinks to the
Bottom of the sea

He scratches his head.

Somewhere in Spain
A woman in a wide brimmed hat
Hits a wrong note – husband cringes
Swatting at her with a folder
Engines peal: backdrop to
Laughter of card games on green felt
Man standing in the corner counting
Losses carefully in his head
His daughter at the copy machine
Swaying to the tune of dissertation print.

Sighs and shrugs.

Carpenter ants in mounds
Build up build down
Flurry frantic frenzy
Carry wistful flakes of French bread
Shaded flannel loot
She watches in faded jeans
Stretched in the sun
Lies by waiting
Pulling hair - ants carry away

He stares off into the sea

posted by ~KL~ @ 4:52 PM 0 comments

A butterfly speaks.

Poetry, like glass shards at an accident scene litters my life, both literally and figuratively. I can flip through any textbook I own from college and find bits and fragments of poems scattered in the margins and under the cover and across the title page. They are always written at odd angles and in pieces. Ends before beginnings and middles after the ends. One line bits, titles, ideas and thoughts that were thrown out by a scribbling of wasted of ink. A coward’s attempt to deny the thought even existed in the first place.
My notebook at work carries halves and wholes of poems and quotes in between arrest notes, stolen bicycle information and license plate numbers. Even toilet paper, napkins and old receipts fail to escape my written word. In the academy, there would be phrases scrawled on my thigh while in the restroom.
Over the last years’ slow spiral into darkness, words have all but disappeared from currently used items. Nary a thou, this, or thine to be had. All blogs, notebooks and normal avenues of verbal purging began to feel neglected.
My life is now a 7 car pile up and, as is inevitable for a trash collector such as me, the glass shards are once again everywhere. In the last two days I’ve been able to accomplish nothing without punctuating it by a scribbling pen against some obliging surface. It was awkward to begin with but once the floodgate of shattering opened the words just kept coming until I was once again writing or typing when I should be sleeping.
But that is just the literal. Poetry used to be everywhere in my life: The gentle snow outside during a particularly stressful exam; a random ladybug crawling on my notebook on a bad day; the strong stiff breeze that seemed to cry with you; the causes to smile when anyone wouldn’t.
A long silence…
A long pause…
Nothing.
I felt trapped.
Then it began again, just the other day, with a very wise butterfly. It was like it knew that my spirit was dying slowly of suffocation and that the world failed to notice. In the midst of facing ultimate financial tragedy, my body falling apart, and imminent heartbreak: He saw his chance.
He landed on the brim of my sunhat and, in that particular way that only butterflies have, slowly folded and unfolded his wings as if he had all the time in the world to flap his butterscotch colored handsomeness and stare at me. I could almost hear him saying: “Why so fast, why so fretful, why so worried? It really is this simple.” Flap. . . Flap. . . Flap. . .
It was like a river held back too long breaking free. Later that afternoon, I found myself staring at this perfect yellow rose. Just one, alone in the slanting sunshine. I watched, standing perfectly still in someone else’s yard, for way too long, feeling way too blessed. It began again like that. The poetry littered again like it had never left. And peace returned despite the fact that I have no reason for peace but for the reality that I’m sitting in God’s hand, quite safe, with him blowing air gently against my cheek to remind me so.
There was a bush that blew in the breeze under the sun just so; someone’s heartbeat under my ear as I fell asleep; a painting in Barrington; A whole afternoon of spilling words out of my spleen onto anything my pen could catch; my cat’s wet nose waking me up; watching the strangest cloud formation pass above a car moon roof; a poignant silence; an unexpected smile; an unlikely friend…

posted by ~KL~ @ 4:51 PM 0 comments

It's been a while: A preface to more.

So, oddly enough blogger will post this at the bottom of what will follow, but it is a preface nonetheless. It has been a while. I have played this game with blogging for years: a flurry of posts followed by long silence until I feel either guilty enough, nostalgic enough, or have just stored up too much to write about that I can no longer contain it. Why am I back this time? I'm not sure. I know what the trigger is, but the underlying cause is uncertain. The trigger was most certainly a slew of friends just recently posting more and the ensuing guilt. Jenn, after long silence has filled books, and the breaking point was Tyler, who procrastinates almost as much if not more than I do, finally posting an update. I think it comes to the fact that there was so much going on, so much changing that as I wrote things in my journal and planned to type them up here for whomever was bored enough to read, that by the time I got around to posting, what I hoped to express had changed or no longer was.
It has been a roller coaster of a half a year. Many who know me, know that I talk of just taking off someday. Few know that early in the fall I actually tried. I get restless and feel trapped when in bad situations that I cannot change. I was driving home from work at 5am and just kept driving past my street. I wasn't sure where I was going, I just knew that it wasn't what I had come to call 'home.' I was deep in situations and problems that were bigger than me. In the end it was the picture in my head of sad faces my cat gives me when I'm leaving that made me turn around, and nothing else. There were dark times like those, where I spent nights crying and frustrated on my couch or in the shower. Times I didn't know where money was coming from. Didn't know how I was going to pay my bills, or where I was going to get energy to make it through one more day of uber super overtime and two jobs. I even got pulled over in Essex for erratic driving because I was crying so hard behind the wheel.
There were good times too. Times in the summer of sitting on rocks with people I love and staring off into the St. Lawrence River, where nothing seems too much to handle or too overwhelming to solve. Fun times at Renaissance festivals, or celebrating the wedding of friends. The mind blowing night along the Ipswich River, while watching an otter play, when my best friend became more. The many beautiful things he has given me that made many of the Poems I planned on posting obsolete.
It's not that I wasn't writing. I was writing. I just never brought myself far enough to share, because, I wasn't so sure I understood what was true and what was just smoke. So, here follow some thoughts and poems and other such things that I've been meaning to post for a long time now. Some obsolete, some still true. It's the verbal struggle journey from dark places to light. A rediscovering of myself, God, why I'm here, what I'm doing, and what it all means. Not that I've found the answer, but at least pieces of it.

posted by ~KL~ @ 4:21 PM 0 comments

About Me

Name: ~KL~
Home: Ipswich, MA, United States
About Me: 1 Corinthians 1:26 - 2:5 "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God - that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord." When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eleoquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive owrds, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power."
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