WRITINGblaaaahg

Spring Breakfast

Oh don’t leave me, yeller-eyed cat!
He hunts squirrels in the willow tree,
then walks under my bent knees
to rub against me for a moment
on his way to my cereal bowl.
He wants to lick up milky wheat flecks,
and (perhaps) he is drawn
to the faint perfume of my spit.

Summer Dumped Me

And I always struggle with the change in weather, clinging hard to steamy four-square fireworks terror along with cold quarry time and warm quarry time and feeling sun-whipped while I cook my kale and mushrooms for dinner and riding my bike until it hurts me everywhere and laying with a deadly hangover on Drew’s parents’ couch and biking in the dark to the bus station to hug him goodbye and cry and then cry harder as my bike’s derailleur snaps while I’m going up a dark hill, then walking fast and crying fiercely, hoping no one will dare to fuck with me as I stomp home alone at midnight.

September Love Poem

The same stomach lurch
when I saw a photograph
of me cradling baby Lu before
she would oblige
and open her eyes for me

I have almost that same feeling,
glancing through a window
between me and the fall,
remembering with a nervous swallow
how we played four-square in June, only once,
to the tune of “Oh—
it is only just the beginning.”

What Made January So Wonderful:

Mainly—biking alone one Saturday night towards a place where I was aware I would run into people I knew. I had made no plans with any of them in particular. I sat and drank a beer alone while I waited for Joseph to sing, and people seeped in around me, certain people who I consider my dearest of treasures. I happily chatted a bit, but mostly I listened with the sweet and happy sensation of being alone in a familiar crowd. I stayed in the dark room even after all of my friends had left, and late in the evening I had a strong sensation that I was slipping quickly down a steep chute of acute and permanent bliss.

I have been happy ever since. Other, weaker emotions will grip me from time to time, but they only distract me for a short time before I suddenly remember how happy I actually am. I have many exciting and happy thoughts, especially when I am biking and especially at night, gliding down dark streets in the cold, always as I head towards someplace warm and bright.

I am amazed that I find myself feeling happy in the winter—winter which I have always hated because it takes my calm and hopeful heart and fills it with a terrifying snowstorm. And yet in the middle of January, the thought comes to me that if things continue in this way, I will inevitably be so happy by the summer that I will be bursting. I will be out of control! I will be standing under such a monstrous mountain of happiness that I will have to start worrying about getting crushed and suffocating! Or perhaps I will begin to suffer from fits of ecstasy that make it impossible for me to lead a normal life!

In any case it is all I can do to keep my head above water, as they say, to roll with the raucous punches, as they say. And I can foresee it already—it is coming!—a ferocious undertow of rapture lurks underneath the sweet and rolling sea. And of course all the while I can never forget that the terrifying and enormous waves of bliss are steadily gaining momentum, and I know that by a certain undetermined point in time, I will be fiercely and completely swept away!