comatose-comet

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If you don’t remember Death, Death reminds you to do so. And if you can’t cope with the facts the next best thing is to go away for a holiday

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Like love, life is beautiful because it has to end

Personal
It's been a while since I last posted a journal, and I actually have a few updates! I'm in the middle of my first-year report for my PhD which feels v stressful and also maddeningly fun, most of the time I feel like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones sorting out the ambiguities and (forgive the pun) Chinese whispers littered throughout scholarship on Chinese history.

Writing-wise, I am in a strange state of annoyance. I want to use my little spare time to read and write, but find I'm not that good at either this year. My poetry/prose is in a bit of a slump and I almost feel like I'm where I was when I started posting on dA - not too sure what my voice sounds like, what it wants to say, and not able to express anything well. Tips, advice, soundtracks, anything you've discovered to help rediscover your writing voice - please let a girl know via comments or messages!

Finally, I've been reading Eat, pray, love because I am so basic it hurts, and actually have found it the most refreshing read possibly ever? After close to a decade of strict observance of the classics, this feels like wandering around with a satchel after years of lugging around rocks in a backpack. Don't get me wrong - I adore modern and old classics but, even though both heavy and light writing are tough to master, I've rarely seen lighter writing balance wit and breeziness with profound meaning. Thought I would ask y'all for general opinions on this tricky topic! What style do you typically prefer to read? (I'm usually a sucker for stream-of-consciousness everything-is-so-poetic-it-hurts writing which can get a bit mind-warping after a while   )

  Currently Reading: Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
  Just Finished: Memento Mori, Muriel Spark, A Passage to India, E. M. Forster

Literature Feature
Some old some new, but all absolutely beautiful  
currents and cold morningssitting at the creek smoking with a heartbeat like a firebird
i tell the forest all the things that hurt
my back from eight years on foam mattresses, my heart
from children who cannot stop thanking me
trees, what have i done to deserve this sanctuary of mist and magic
grassy hills, who was the girl who came to you so long ago
and is she still hiding somewhere
rocky mud lanes, will my feet ever feel as loved when they hit concrete
fireside darkness, when will i sing nonsense again
windy river, how do i stop longing for your currents and cold mornings
i try to tell the forest what doesn't hurt, too
wet leaves, my body doesn't feel right when i go home
kilometer uphill, i have never loved a walk so much as i do yours
empty cabin, rain storm machine that you are singing me to sleep
cedar groves, i used to think i hated going outside until
nature wrapped her arms around my rib cage
mosquito swarms, the bites leave scars that are more real than my memories
i call this forest home and i am ye Things My Father Taught MeThe smooth and white kind of birch bark
is good for making campfires
on cold and rainy autumn days.
It makes an excellent kindling
and will take flame even when wet.
Bacon and mustard sandwiches
toasted over that campfire
are the most delicious things you can cook
when you're hunting or fishing out in the woods.
And when you make campfire coffee,
put the instant coffee, sugar, and powdered 
creamer in the cup first,
then pour the boiling water over;
this is especially good when you don't
have a spoon to stir the coffee.
That was an old trick he learned
from eating c-rations during the war.
All these years later I still do the coffee trick.
Always cream and sugar in the cup first,
then pour over the coffee.
I remember him every time I do that. CoastlineI found the coils of snake-stones, 
And other ancient oddities trapped forever,
I discovered sand in my boots and the salt-air on lips,
Wind tangled seaweed and hair-
Stumbling upon leafy forest fronds trapped in rock, 
Beachcombing for something - long lost on the tide,
Or still embedded somewhere in the cliff-face.
Driftwood and the illusion of freedom-
Collecting shells to take the ocean home. We are both foreigners in a house we once shared.Reacquaint me:
your mother died last year; my boyfriend has left.
You wring your hands beneath the table, where you think
I cannot see. I refuse
to care; instead I
line up lovers
between bites of toast.
You've taken to staying out
late, I've taken
to sleeping early. We exchange
carefully chosen words-- the ones
clipped of meaning.
Reacquaint me:
here we are, breathing the same city air,
both of us trying to seize our own brands
of happiness. Yet what is that
but a passing shadow of sun?
In the darkening afternoon
it illuminates us
at our prime. We can no more
claim it
than we can trap
the loves of our lives
to our side.
Reacquaint me: let us burn, let us shiver. crooked blue linesi took a photo of my face and saved it in a document
i changed the file from .JPG to .txt
i wrote I DON'T NEED YOU TO LIKE ME into the body of the text of my face
until my face disappeared
i am thinking about the summer
when i bought large bags of chips
and hid them around the house
i didn't let myself eat them
but i wanted to own them
so no one else could eat them either
i had a feeling of not wanting to sleep again
and experienced migraines in two different countries
i threw up in a club and then passed out on the floor
the floor was very sticky
the lights seemed to make the room more dark
than if it had been a room without lights
i hadn't been drinking
so security let me come back in
a half hour later
that night a man in a mcdonald's told me
i was pretty enough to do anything with my life
and could even be a waitress
i consider this a good summer
i was very productive
i like these feelings: exercise, studying, being hungry, making lists
i like the thought that if i repeat this proce Portrait of an UnderachieverHe sorts conversations
autobiographically, picking passages
that best brandish his full-figured ego
and leaving out the details.
He'll probably grow up
and have a wine cellar full of bullshit
vintages and other frivolities-
he uses words like frivolities.
Regularly.
He is alliterative, makes allusions
in ordinary conversation
and never orders off the menu- except
when it's in French or Latin or
Swahili Bantu.
And his life is full of empty moments
when he should have been doing big things. winterxxiii. weeks and days and hours of recovery were instantly undone when that song
came on the radio in the cab somewhere 20 minutes away from home and i sat there sobbing
in the car and i could feel the taxi driver feeling awkward with this girl in the back sounding
like a humpback whale, but i didn't know how to stop. i cried while i handed him the
(slightly soggy) change, and i cried up the stairs, into my room and onto the bed.
all that progess, dissolved in the first 7 bars of a song. People Living in Tunnels Under Las VegasThe newspaper headlines told me so.
As I was reading the article in my bed,
eating a handful of Oreos, I thought
about being wet.
Not the kind of wet (slipperyslidyfuntimes)
you want to be,
but the kind of wet you feel in your bones.
Wet like the time my grandfather left me and my sister
watching his tackle box by the side of the road
in Toronto in six inches of slush that
was slowly seeping into my socks,
while he bought cigarettes from the man
in the oversized poncho at the gas station.
And there are cities full of dreams
and cities full of dirt,
but Las Vegas is neither of those.
It’s a city instead with no name or face,
nothing recognizable you can reach out and touch.
Someone told me once that in Spanish
Las Vegas means “the fields.”
My grandfather told me once
on a fishing trip, while I sat
on top of his tackle box,
about the Asphodel fields.
How these Romans believed
people whose sins equaled the good they did
went to the Asphodel fields, and drank
from a river found wildcatYou have been posting
signs all over town.
How long does “young” last?
Just imagine what it’s like;
turning to prayer when
I am grabbing at what looks like retuning.
Flowers in a wood have no regrets.
I lie down in this bed, I pretend is clover,
and wring my hands over you.
How far can we go
before I give away my name?
the milk on my tongue?
my need to be brushed daily? Snow Falling AwayBeneath the thaw
there'll be everything
that lies beneath your sleep  --  
beneath your astral projections;
a home
slipping from its perforated roof
but holding it together;
paved, and bowered roads
slowly bleeding away
to stucco
as it straddles the light
to white ovations
on the window ledge
as everything that once shone through you
bares itself as wires
and distended metal
behind the curtain
as you slip from your blanket
your bent bough
into the green,
and I must remind myself
that rust is noble too
as it is in photographs,
and memories, and sepia filters  --  
that it is a bloom
like any other,
but not to be able to close my eyes again,
not to be able to close my eyes. Poems for My Uncle Dan1. Sister
my mother is ten
and her brother
shows her how to build
a bike from spare parts
their hands move together
-circles rippling
through an open pond
later they would
test the hours against
a setting sun
wheels turning
long shadows
in the fading light
2. Family
four daughters
first the dawn
and then the sun
four sisters
two
to each side
-my uncle
in the middle
palms open
holding life
like water
in the shape
of his hands
3. Girlfriend
they meet
together in
another night
his hand touches
the bare
skin of her shoulder
the road follows
stretching blind
on both sides
she loves him
and she
forgets
4. Death
how does
this start?
with the car sputtering?
stuttered breath
breathing
that it still
had too far
left to drive?
his girlfriend watches
her eyes follow
his hand as
it opens the door
he steps
growing headlights blossom
bringing a death
that he does not see
5. Girlfriend on a Bus
she is
leaving
she watches
the length
of the road
pass by again
and she thinks
to herself
sometimes
there a See How the Hurtsickle StaysIn our humid perfume, or by it,
the sun steamed the husked prairie hillsides.
My palm in your palm was a plain wren, simple as earth
made dust by a wind—up and up—into unfiltered sky
and your eyes were big as ripe nectarines.
I noticed none of these things, could not smell
the pine for you were a heady pheromone. Our tent
was an idle curiosity, how we would bookmark into it.
There were other sounds than the gauzy rustle of small blue
flowers butting the nylon.
Is it enough to re-remember history? How I pinned
one cornflower, its proud head full of superstition,
right then to your collar. How blue it stayed.
How blue and brimming.
Look, I have planted them in the garden.
See how the hurtsickle stays. conference calls in a conifer boxhe brushes his teeth with tobacco,
rinses with coffee
mouth stained red
never could keep it together,
busted rib and punctured lung
drinking straight from diner coffee pots
blackened tongue and darkened eyes,
bruised up knuckles dusted gold
possessed by possession
a poltergeist haunting himself,
lapping blood from collar bones
tearing flesh from throats
to disguise the taste
of kissing him twenty / somethinggrowing up   means :    
bird metaphors   are becoming trite / i must no longer   write
about leaving the nest but decide where i can find a place to build.
like this we all pay our rents. i think about Franklin and his taxes
/ skull collector / his eventual place in the dirt / a nest of paper : currency
                                                          of misappropriated quotes.
i return home / find my poster of Che folded into tablecloth /
critical theory textbooks mothballed into the ivory of closet.
/ by home :          i mean nest / or conjugal remembrance. 
when i dream anymore, it’s about equity / fringe benefits.
best practices / suits / the people who wear them : how they too
                          &<da:thumb id="782752505"/> my laurel tree. (#7)unlike others.
unlike moons,
satellites, mechas,
and universes.
unlike almost
but not quites
and in-betweens;
coming close,
and seeing things.
unlike dandelions,
lion's teeth,
and serpent skin.
unlike tomorrow
but not yesterday
and presently;
we're moving
and doing so, swiftly.
my laurel tree.
your evergreen
seems everlasting.
unlike others. of featherless birds.writing
is the art of
spilling my soul,
each word
a drop
of my blood
until i lay
exanguinated -
if i
were a bird
each line
would be
a feather
plucked from two
fragile
wings
until
i lay
bare,
unable
to fly,
a skeleton
of my past self,
with bones
hollow, the marrow
long gone
until
a breeze
lifts me
& i
inhale &
start again a gift of breadcrumbsdistant
in all but
the ways
that I
have pictured you
sun-kissed
not ocean-starved
shaking off
the years (the fog)
for all
that you
deserve
.
would that I
could will you
weightless
buoy
September
teach sleep
to a
dream
at most
(renewing
hope)
I am a
mirror
enchanted by
starlight
reminding
magic
of form
(lucky
to
be)
building
a language
between us